From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2002-01-30T02:18:09+09:00
Subject: Re: Subrange of String subclass => invalid object

Hi,

In message "Re: Subrange of String subclass => invalid object"
    on 02/01/30, "Chr. Rippel" <chr_news@gmx.net> writes:

|I don't know if other #become implementations allow unrestricted type
|change - to allow this seems rather silly to me too - clearly turning
|the Class object into nil might not be such a good idea.

It's not just silly, it's fatal.

|Anyway since nobody is taking up the issue I'll try to give the imaginary
|private Object instance method 
|
| #become(target_type)  - returning self, but self.type == traget_type
|
|a reasonable simple semantics.

With this semantics, you can easily crash the interpreter.  You can
say this is limitation of the current implementation.  But I think
this "limitation" is reasonable for performance and simplicity.

To implement #become properly, I have to re-implement the whole
interpreter, with the cost of performance.  I don't think #become is
worthy enough for the cost I have to pay.

|A bit of topic but related to  Dave's _Strings  class are there any plans on
|a Char and/or _Char class?.

No.  Considering multilingualization issues, character class is a gate
to the hell.  No one agrees with each other.  I'd like to leave Char
class to the users.

							matz.