I don't need (or want) to mutate the receiver. Actually I thought that String is also immutable. $, could just return a new symbol instance instead. Concating symbols is quite practical for metaprogramming, as most things are named with symbols and compare by identity...
Peter On Sun, Mar 05, 2017 at 04:29:39AM +0200, Igor Stasenko wrote: > Hmm.. symbols is usually treated like immutable object(s) in system. They > tend to stay while rest of data changes.. This could explain why authors of > this method > purposedly picked to use ByteString for its species to discourage using > symbols for collection manipulation(s).. > Else, if you would need to change this method as well: > > at: anInteger put: anObject > "You cannot modify the receiver." > > self errorNoModification > > because base class #, implementation is going to use at:put: during > concatenation. > > > > On 4 March 2017 at 13:40, Clément Bera <bera.clem...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > All symbols are interned in the Symbol table. If one does (#foo , #bar , > > #baz) and each returned value would be a symbol, then both #foobar and > > #foobarbaz would be registered in the symbol table. > > > > I would guess that's why the concatenated value is a string and not a > > symbol, to avoid registering many unused symbols. But maybe I am wrong. > > > > If for your use case you need to concatenate symbols and get a symbol out > > of it, you can define a new method in Symbol to do what you want. > > > > For example: > > > > Symbol >> ,, arg > > ^ (self , arg) asSymbol > > > > Then > > > > #foo ,, #bar > > > > Answers directly the symbol #foobar. > > > > Best, > > > > > > > > > > On Sat, Mar 4, 2017 at 11:36 AM, Peter Uhnak <i.uh...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> Hi, > >> > >> why is the concatenation of symbols a string? > >> > >> e.g. #desc, #Name -> 'descName' > >> > >> this means that I have to always wrap in parentheses and recast, or > >> stream it, e.g. > >> > >> (#desc, #Name) asSymbol -> #descName > >> Symbol streamContents: [ :s | s << #desc; << #Name ] -> #descName > >> > >> both of which introduce extraneous syntactical clutter. > >> The technical reason seems to be ByteSymbol>>#species returning > >> ByteString, but I have no idea why it has to be this complicated. > >> > >> Thanks, > >> Peter > >> > >> > > > > > -- > Best regards, > Igor Stasenko.
