Stephan Rudlof wrote:

>  
>
>In other words: I don't like to change to non ANSI behavior to satisfy
>applications thought to be portable.
>

Except that we wouldn't be changing anything to non-ANSI behavior. 
 After all, the behavior is currently *undefined* in the ANSI standard, 
therefore any behavior satisfies ANSI

>
>Moreover: changing to non ANSI behavior could *break* other apps, which
>*are* portable already!
>
>  
>

If it broke other apps, then *they* would be relying on a particular 
behavior that is currently ANSI-undefined, and the same argument could 
be used to argue that *they* should be changed (so they don't rely on 
that behavior).

As far as changing the ANSI standard, all we would do here is define 
what is currently undefined.  Also, in the absence of a definition 
(whether in this area or any other area of the ANSI standard), the only 
thing anybody really *can* do is to try to look for a defacto standard. 
 And, since all the commercial Smalltalk implementations seem to have 
the same behavior here, that sounds like a pretty convincing defacto 
standard to me.

So, I remain unconvinced that Squeak being different from the other 
Smalltalks in this regard isn't just a gratuitous difference for no real 
gain.

But I appreciate your effort to convince me :-)

Nevin