Tom Anderson wrote: > Except that in smalltalk, this isn't true: in ST, every variable > *appears* to contain a reference to an object, but implementations > may not actually work like that. In particular, SmallTalk 80 (and > some earlier smalltalks, and all subsequent smalltalks, i think) > handles small integers (those that fit in wordsize-1 bits) > differently: all variables contain a word, whose bottom bit is a tag > bit; if it's one, the word is a genuine reference, and if it's zero, > the top bits of the word contain a signed integer.
This type of implementation has been discussed on python-dev. IIRC it was decided by Guido that unless anyone wanted to implement it and show a significant performance advantage without any regressions on any platform, it wasn't worth it. Basically, put up or shut up ;) Tim Delaney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
