[ANSI-Smalltalk] #contents on <collectionStream> (was: #contents on WriteStream)

[Bruce Badger]

2008/10/21 Richard O'Keefe <ok at cs.otago.ac.nz>:
> On 21 Oct 2008, at 6:44 am, Bruce Badger wrote:
>> Or perhaps there needs to be a family of stream classes each with
>> obvious behaviour.  It would be nice to have as much consistency as
>> possible, but things like >>contents will inevitably be different
>> depending on the underlying 'collection'

> The *implementation* will be different.
> It is far from clear that the *semantics* should be different.
> It certainly isn't *inevitable* that the semantics differ;
> the standard says it shouldn't, and in my library it doesn't.

So, in your library, if I send >>contents to a socket stream what do I
get?  If I >>reset a socket stream what is the position of the socket?

I agree with many of your points about the ANSI standard, and indeed
we now have this project to try to take material Steps to move things
along from there.  Part of that will be to encourage the various
Smalltalk dialects to adopt Steps.  I agree that we should avoid
making change for changes sake, but we should not fear making changed
that need to be made.  The vendors have shown support and most have
people watching this list, but they are bound to be tentative until
they see real Steps being made.    This won't be quick and it won't be
easy.  Should we just give up?  I don't think so :-)

Best regards,
    Bruce
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