From: Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@...>
Date: 2007-10-03T23:44:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Reference vs. Reference

On 10/3/07, Robert Dober <robert.dober@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/3/07, Rick DeNatale <rick.denatale@gmail.com> wrote:
> <snip>
> >
> > One of the things which the early Smalltalk memory management design
> > did was to enable the become method.  In Smalltalk one could say:
> >
> >     object1 become: object2
> >
> Squeak still does support this.
> When used with care it can be a wonderful tool, especially in metaprogramming.

Yep, it looks like Squeak has both ProtoObject#become: which has the
old swap semantics, and Object#becomeForward: which is one-way.

A quick look at the senders of #become: in the standard 3.9 image
seems to indicate that none of them actually use the swap they are all
becoming a newly created and otherwise unreferenced object, which
won't be referenced when the method returns.

-- 
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/