Matthew

it would be a really nice occasion to document your code with a couple 
of SUnit tests.
http://www.iam.unibe.ch/~ducasse/Programmez/OnTheWeb/SUnitEnglish2.pdf
It should take you 5 min and this way you will help the people looking 
at it.

Stef


On 9 déc. 04, at 02:13, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> "Matthew Hamrick" <Matthew.Hamrick at gibson.com> wrote
> (edited somewhat to take fewer lines and be more ASCII-friendly):
>
> 	popCount
> 	 "Answers the number of bits set in an integer."
> 	 | t1 t2 |
> 	 t1 := self.
> 	 t2 := 0.
> 	 [t1 == 0] whileFalse: [t1 := t1 bitAnd: t1 - 1. t2 := t2 + 1].
> 	 ^ t2
>
> What is this supposed to do when the number is negative?
>
>     -1 bitAnd: -2	=> -2
>     -2 bitAnd: -3	=> -4
>     -4 bitAnd: -5	=> -8
>
> In Squeak 3.6-5429-full.image, (-1 popCount) eventually terminates 
> because
>     m := -1 bitShift: 31.
>     m := m bitAnd: m - 1
> sets m to 0, instead of to the correct value (-1 bitShift: 32).
> First time I've ever had Squeak give me the wrong answer for an
> integer calculation.
>
> Notionally, a Squeak negative integer has infinitely many 1 bits, so I
> suggest
>
>     popCount
>       "self >= 0 => answer the number of 1 bits in the binary 
> representation.
>        self <  0 => answer the number of 0 bits in the binary 
> representation.
>        Two's complement is assumed.
>       "
>       |m n|
>       (m := self) < 0 ifTrue: [m := -1 - self].
>       n := 0.
>       [m == 0] whileFalse: [m := m bitAnd: m-1. n := n+1].
>       ^n
>
> Another alternative would be to make it an error to send #popCount to a
> negative integer.
>
>