On 07 May 2005 05:58:52 -0700, Randal L. Schwartz <merlyn at stonehenge.com> wrote:
> >>>>> "stéphane" == stéphane ducasse <ducasse at iam.unibe.ch> writes:
> 
> stéphane> Hi brent
> stéphane> I'm not sure but in VW it is advised to do
> 
> stéphane>       i become: String new    and not i become: nil
> 
> stéphane> The point explained to me was that  else you will have a lot of
> stéphane> pointer pointing to nil while you would prefer to have them pointing
> stéphane> on fresh objects that will be garbagecollected.
> 
> Well, in some VMs, "become:" is a swap, not unidirectional.  "become: nil"
> would be a very very very (...) very bad thing to do.

Yes, that's true in Squeak as well.  You want #becomeForward:.

Avi