Comments on {} by David Smith
Last updated at 2:40 pm UTC on 16 January 2006
Stef:
But......
I use it all the time. It's a neat idea. Here is code I found by searching all source for #{.
EToyIncommingMessages class>>allTypes
^MessageTypes ifNil: [
MessageTypes _ {
self typeKeyboardChat.
self typeMorph.
self typeFridge.
self typeStatusRequest.
self typeStatusReply.
self typeSeeDesktop.
self typeAudioChat.
self typeAudioChatContinuous.
self typeMultiChat. } ]
HeadMorph>>addSpikyHair
| hair |
hair _ PolygonMorph
vertices: {83@3. 81@30. 91@27. 111@23. 97@32. 112@37. 99@45. 114@52. 95@53. 55@43. 10@50. 1@40. 14@40. 8@26. 24@37. 15@11. 29@29. 30@16. 36@30. 41@6. 49@31. 54@8. 61@32. 64@1. 70@27}
Next is a fragment of a demo. The names Babble, Donut and Marble are humorous, but descriptive.
d := BabbleDonutMorph new largeDonut; name: '- Commons Area -'.
d addAllMarbles: {
(BabbleMarbleMorph new mediumMarble name: 'Wendy').
(BabbleMarbleMorph new mediumMarble name: 'Dave and Archie at home').
(BabbleMarbleMorph new mediumMarble name: 'Tom in Minneapolis').
(BabbleMarbleMorph new mediumMarble name: 'Mark').
(BabbleMarbleMorph new mediumMarble name: 'Big Screen').
(BabbleMarbleMorph new mediumMarble name: 'John in the Lab') } shuffled.
These are just a few examples I picked to show 'interesting' uses of { and }. I found 794 methods in my image that contained at least one ${. A few were commented out C code. Most were from the array constructor. It's used widely and the result of using it makes the code much more readable than 'Array with:'.
The construct is useful and widely used. If it has definitional and theoretical problems, then certainly look at how to fix those; but let's not discard a useful construct.
At 8:49 +0200 9/30/01, ducasse stephane wrote:
>Hi daniel
>
>I send it into the mailing list too becuase this is important
>
>From a language design perspective
>
>#() is necessary because it is compiled statically and cannot not be
>simulated by other construct. Storing #() in Stack frame is not really goo
>but this is an implementation aspect.
I don't think this is true at all. #() holds symbols, strings, characters numbers, and in some Smalltalk systems it holds true and false. There is nothing in a #() that you can't write as a literal elsewhere, so:
#( abc 'abc' 4 3.4 $r )
can be written as:
(Array with: #abc with: 'abc'), (Array with: 4 with: 3.4 with: $r)
- () is a great convenience, but it is not absolutely necessary.
>#{} is not necessary because this is shortcut macro-expansion for Array new
>add: ....
>
>So why having only this one. There is two ways:
> or you have a way to describe macro-expansion like in Scheme where you
> can define any macro in a clear way (you know the semantic of the stuff
>
> or we remove it because why not having
> {{}} for Set new add:
This already has a definition: an empty array in an array, like: #(#()).
> {#[]} for OrderedCollection new....Because I use more
> OrderedCollection than array
- [] isn't used in Squeak, but some Smalltalk systems (and maybe the standard) use it as a way of writing ByteArray literals: #[ 0 255 76 98 4 67 2 ]. We should carefully decide if we want to differ from others in syntax. (Actually, 'we' already have; for some odd reason '#[' is a symbol! I would have expected to have to write #'[' to get a symbol with a special character.)
I use more OrderedCollection's too, but it was interesting to note that after looking at a couple of hundred uses of {} I don't recall seeing even one message send to convert the array to something else. I think that OCs are widely used when code is building an indexed collection, but rare when the collection is built ahead of time by a literal array or array constructor.
>... SNIP ...
>
Dave
David N. Smith
IBM T J Watson Research Center
Hawthorne, NY
dnsmith@watson.ibm.com
