Hi Jason,

on Thu, 06 Sep 2007 17:44:54 +0200, you wrote:

> On 9/6/07, Klaus D. Witzel wrote:
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> But it has! :) Smalltalk has implicit self, to some extent. Consider  
>> that
>> Smalltalk and Self are at the same language level. Then, whenever you  
>> use
>> nil, true, false, a temp/arg, an iVar or a class/pool/global var, you  
>> send
>> that implicitly to self, in both languages :)
>
> To self?  If you mean self as in the receiver of the message (which is
> what I mean), then I disagree.

Right, didn't mean that.

> In Smalltalk, when the compiler sees a
> use or an assignment of an iVar then he generates a push opcode that
> accesses the current receiver,

Sure, that was mentioned in my previous mail.

> but that's not a message send, that's a
> low level memory access.

right, after the compiler has done its work.

>  temp/arg variables are located in the
> context object, not the receiver.

right, the implicit self starts with the context object.

>  And nil, true and false are
> singleton objects.

sure. nobody claimed they are not singleton, no?

> I don't see what you mean with this at all.

Sorry for disturbing you (no offense). I offer to take this offline, if  
you like.

>> In Smalltalk it's the compiler who knows what the receiver(s) of these
>> implicit self messages are, it [the compiler :) ] quickly calculates the
>> intended binding and emits a corresponding bytecode, optimizing away the
>> costly message send.
>>
>> Can you see it? :)
>>
>> In Self the initial non-optimizing compiler doesn't know that quick
>> binding. But the Self runtime optimizing compiler comes to the very same
>> result (binding) as Smalltalk's compiler.
>>
>> It's a matter of view on things :) It'd be easy in Smalltalk to always
>> send (self nil), (self true), (self iVar), etc :)
>
> Sorry, I don't understand this at all.  This may be a way of looking
> at it, but I don't see it in the language, nor the blue book
> specifications.
>

NP. it's as I said, a matter of view.

/Klaus