I also think that allowing concatenation on Symbols does not violate their
immutability contract.
As a thought experiment, what could be the problem with adding
Symbol >> , arg
^ (self , arg) asSymbol
?
(I have found the original issue raised annoying as well)
> On 5 Mar 2017, at 11:35, Peter Uhnak <i.uh...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
