String hierarchy (was: UTC-8 (was ...))
Lex Spoon
lex at cc.gatech.edu
Fri Mar 17 11:10:50 UTC 2000
Maurice Rabb <m3rabb at stono.com> wrote:
> At 10:18 PM -0500 3/16/00, Bijan Parsia wrote:
> [snip a lot of interesting thoughts]
>
> You know what? My frustrations with the implementation straight
> jacket that String and Symbol currently have us in (due to being
> variableByteSubclasses) has me wanting to throw the baby out with the
> bathwater.
>
> Inheritance of protocol is an acceptable reason to inherit from a
> supertype, provided it truly should implement the entire protocol of
> the supertype. Is this true of String? Yes [blush]. I also agree
> that it is proper for it implement the entire SequenceableCollection
> protocol. However, it is debatable whether or not it should share
> the behavior of ArrayedCollection.
>
What in ArrayedCollection does not apply to Strings? There isn't much
in there.
I'm not so sure what is so wierd to people about a String being a
collection. What else is a string but a sequenced collection of
characters? It always seemed a success story of Smalltalk that you can
just stick String in the Collection hierarchy and instantly get access
to a zillion generic collection operations with no further work.
Perhaps it is the people who want Object>>do: who dislike String
is-a Collection? Well, that's why Object>>do: is a bad idea. :)
Lex
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