[ANSI-Smalltalk] A list of interesting methods, not present in the ANSI standard

[Simon Kirk]

And can I add that it's one of the most useful methods, I find. I use  
it regularly.</delurk>
S

On 20 Mar 2008, at 08:27, John Dougan wrote:
>
> Ralph Johnson wrote:
>>> Object>>ifNil:
>>>  Object>>ifNil:ifNotNil:
>>>  Object>>ifNotNil:
>>>  Object>>ifNotNil:ifNil:
>>>
>> These were widely used by the time the standard was written, but not
>> part of every image, and i imagine the committee decided that it
>> wasn't worth the effort to put them in the standard.  However, I  
>> don't
>> think they are controversial, either.  Since then, they have become
>> even more widely used.
>>
> There actually is a minor controversy here as the VisualWorks  
> version of these has the block for the ifNotNil: clauses take an  
> optional argument.  I discovered while porting a large-ish chunk of  
> VW code to Squeak/Croquet that the Squeak version does not take the  
> optional argument and it's a compiler change to make it do so as  
> these methods are optimized out.
>
> I personally think the VW approach is bad style and a possible  
> efficiency issue. I ended up implementing Squeak's version of the  
> one argument ifNotNil: in VW, which is ifNotNilDo: .
>
> Cheers,
>  -- John
>
> -- 
> John Dougan
> jdougan at acm.org
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