On Mon, 3 Mar 2003 14:14:19 +0100  Hannes Hirzel <hannes.hirzel.squeaklist at bluewin.ch> wrote:
>I like this thread! It is very Smalltalk-like! I imagine a Java guy
>would never have the idea to think about this!
>
>BTW Are there any pointers to  more explanations about 
>	Smalltalk specialObjectsArray  
>(Purple book / blue book and other references.)
>
>I would like to make a minnow swiki entry on this.

Since Smalltalk-80 used an object table, a separate special objects array was not necessary. The things the interpreter needed to know about were the first entries in the object table and their indices were contants in an initialization method for the VM. Something like

	NilPointer _ 2.
	FalsePointer _ 4.
	TruePointer _ 6.

	...etc...

See "Objects used by the interpreter" pp 575-576 of the original blue book.

Cheers,
Bob