> Aren't you the one who keeps saying that Smalltalk doesn't have variables, 
> just names that refer to objects? :-)

Err, no. I'm the guy who says fix the language! :-)

Heh, heh.

Cheers,
  - Andreas

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Colin Putney" <cputney at wiresong.ca>
To: "The general-purpose Squeak developers list" 
<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 30, 2004 2:50 PM
Subject: Re: About Smalltalk at: .... ifAbsent:/present:


> Andreas Raab wrote:
>
>> I like it but it's ambigious too if for any reason the value of Foo 
>> understands the message. The point is that the #ifPresent: message really 
>> is meta in the sense that it ought to be sent to the variable Foo instead 
>> of the value Foo.
>
> Aren't you the one who keeps saying that Smalltalk doesn't have variables, 
> just names that refer to objects? :-)
>
> Given the limitation that we can't send a message to the variable (the 
> binding, I guess) without changing the language, I still think this is a 
> reasonable solution:
>
> * it provides a consistent idiom for expressing a weak dependency
> * the default implementation can handle the class-loaded-or-absent case
> * other objects can override it to manage their own "presence."
>
> That seems consistent with the way other parts of Smalltalk work, and it's 
> a distinct improvement over the ad-hoc stuff we've all been doing.
>
> Colin
>