Caper needs Self Help

[Mike Austin]

--- In self-interest at yahoogroups.com, Jecel Assumpcao Jr <jecel at m...> 
wrote:
> On Tuesday 18 November 2003 11:35, Paul Chapman wrote:
> > My other message today reveals that I've still been unable to get
> > Self running under Cygwin.
> 
> I have never tried it, so I can't help you there. Personally, I 
would 
> just boot some CD-based Linux (such as Knoppix) and use that to try 
out 
> Self (which could be on the Windows partition on the hd).
> 
> > So here are a couple of questions about
> > Self the answers to which would help me with Caper's semantics.
> >
> > (1) Is there any use for an inline object-with-code?  It seems to 
me
> > that there isn't, because there is no selector associated with 
such
> > an object, and therefore it's rather difficult to invoke the code.
> 
> This was a feature in Self 1.0 that was replaced by a parser 
> optimization in later versions. So it used to be that if you wrote
> 
>       3 + (4 * 5)
> 
> and looked at the bytecodes, you would see what you call an 
> "object-with-code" as the argument for the '+' message. There is no 
> selector, but just pushing it to the stack was enough to invoke it. 
> Something like
> 
>      3 + [4 * 5] value
> 
> Since these were full method objects, you could write
> 
>      3 + (|z| z: 4 * 5. 10 + z)
> 
> which in a more recent version of Self will give you an "inner 
methods 
> are no longer supported" error.
> 
> > (2) Conversely, what happens if a keyword slot contains an object-
> > without-code? 
> 
> That gives you a syntax error. "Empty objects" (even if they have 
> slots!) can only live in unary slots.
> 
> > I assume that accessing the object in such a slot by
> > sending a keyword message to its container would return (a copy 
of)
> > the object itself with the parameter slots filled in.  Is that 
right?
> 
> That is not how the current implementation works, but is a very 
> reasonable thing to expect. In fact, there are good arguments for 
both 
> returning the object itself and for returning a copy of it.
> 
> > I'm trying to work out what the deep meaning of Self's objects-
with-
> > and-without-code is (cf Smalltalk's separation of methods and
> > instance variables into two namespaces), in order to find the best
> > way for Caper to distinguish between "values" (evaled at 
definition)
> > and "methods" (evaled at invocation) in fields.
> 
> You might also find you need something like blocks, which are a 
huge 
> complication.

A huge complication?  Aren't block closure's just anonymous methods 
(which are objects) with their proto set to their enclosing 
environment?  I thought it was something like this in self.

-- Mike