[Vm-dev] becomeForward: behavior

[Florin Mateoc]

Hi,

I am a bit surprised by the #becomeForward: behavior in Squeak. This is a
one way become, where the target of the operation is the receiver, which
sheds its identity/existence. Nobody points to it after the primitive
execution, so it is discarded. This understanding also conforms to the
method comment.
As such, I remember a pattern of usage in VisualAge Smalltalk, where one
way become was used as a cheap cleanup/avoidance of memory leaks, by doing
oneWayBecome: nil. It's not that I advocate for it, but this works in
Squeak too, except in Squeak #becomeForward: does an additional thing to
the pointers redirection, it changes the identityHash of the argument, the
non (obvious) target. While I understand this may be useful in certain
situations, I think it is a dangerous conflation of activities. A new
primitive that sets the identity hash could be used (VA has it) explicitly
instead when such behavior is desired.
As it is, if I do "Object new becomeForward: nil", it succeeds and it
changes nil's identityHash.

Sorry if this has been debated before,

Cheers,
Florin
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