Morph>>Delete

Jesse Welton jwelton at pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu
Wed Aug 27 13:41:38 UTC 2003


Aaron J Reichow wrote:
> 
> > > 2. The format for specifying a message is Class>>#message ; that is your
> > > message should have read Morph>>#delete.
> >
> > Really?  I use #delete to talk about the message, but Morph>>delete to
> > talk about a particular method.
> 
> The convention is to use the #.  It's kind of neat actually-  do a
> print-it on "Morph>>#delete" in a workspace- the CompiledMethod for that
> method is returned.  #delete can be passed (a symbol), and delete cannot.

Yes, "Morph>>#delete" is a valid Smalltalk expression and
"Morph>>delete" is not.  However, in discussing Smalltalk code, I
observe that "Morph>>delete" is by far the more common style in actual
usage (at least on the Squeak list, but I expect elsewhere, as well).
This is doubtles related to the fact that Squeak itself reports method
references in this syntax in debuggers, MessageTallies, and elsewhere.
Doing a "method strings with it" search for '>>' turned up a hundred
or so examples in my working image (mostly deprecation messages), and
only one example of Class>>#selector, TestCase>>printOn:.

-Jesse



More information about the Squeak-dev mailing list