Re: Fixnum#clone and Float#clone raise different exceptions

On Friday, November 26, 2004, 10:47:02 AM, Yukihiro wrote:

> Hi,

> In message "Re: Fixnum#clone and Float#clone raise different exceptions"
>     on Thu, 25 Nov 2004 22:49:20 +0900, Gavin Sinclair
> <[e-mail]> writes:

|4.clone ->> 4 sounds better to me, but I must be missing something.

> Do you accept the following behavior?

>   a = 4
>   a.instance_eval{@a=5}
>   b = a.clone           # b = 4
>   b.instance_eval{@a=10}
>   a.instance_eval{@a}   # @a = 10

> Similar thing can happen for a Float and singleton methods.

Yes, I do accept that behaviour, because setting instance variables of
a number is very esoteric.  But I realise it could cause some people
to come to grief :)

Thanks for pointing it out.

Could immediate objects adopt copy-on-write semantics?  Such that it's
possible to clone 4 and have two separate objects when needed (e.g.
for instance variables), but optimised for the common case?

Gavin