Hi Lex,

I just looked at this and it seems to be a pretty idiosyncratic plugin given
that it encodes only values in the SmallInteger range. How about
generalizing this a little and speed up the family of messages we find
ByteArray? It seems to me that the IntegerPoker is doing exactly what
ByteArray platform independent access does.

Cheers,
  - Andreas

> -----Original Message-----
> From: squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org 
> [mailto:squeak-dev-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] On 
> Behalf Of Lex Spoon
> Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 9:18 PM
> To: The general-purpose Squeak developers list
> Subject: Re: IntegerPokerPlugin?
> 
> 
> Tim Rowledge <tim at sumeru.stanford.edu> wrote:
> > OK, what is this for, why should it be kept alive and who 
> has any use
> > for it? Currently it is _not_ in the VMMaker package and 
> unless we hear
> > a good reason for keeping its life support turned on it 
> will be allowed
> > to die with some dignity intact.
> > 
> 
> It speeds up Nebraska.   In particular, it is used by putInteger32:at:
> and getInteger32:.  Last I checked (years ago) the difference was
> significant; the interaction went from jerky to smooth if you had the
> plugin.  Anyone who uses Nebraska, the way it is currenly 
> written, would
> like to have this plugin in their VM.
> 
> There may be a way to do these primitives without IntegerPokerPlugin,
> but for now the code relies on them for the best performance.
> 
> Lex
>