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From: johnson@cs.uiuc.EDU (Ralph Johnson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: Re: PP Smalltalk R4 Query, Bug?
Keywords: help
Message-ID: <1991Mar8.140425.10863@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 8 Mar 91 14:04:25 GMT
References: <4931@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Sender: news@m.cs.uiuc.edu (News Database (admin-Mike Schwager))
Reply-To: johnson@cs.uiuc.EDU (Ralph Johnson)
Organization: University of Illinois
Lines: 26

Paul mention asks about the fact that
	| aDictionary anAssociation |
	aDictionary := Dictionary new.
	anAssociation := #Three->3.
	aDictionary add: anAssociation.

is different from
	| aDictionary |
	aDictionary := Dictionary new add: #Three->3.

These expressions have always been different, because
the add: messages for collections always returns the
argument, not the receiver.  Lot of people think that
this is a design bug, but there *is* a reason for it.

The reason is because of cascaded messaged.
	aCollection add: thing1;
		    add: thing2;
		    add: thing3
will only work if add: returns the receiver.

Summary: the ParcPlace documentation was wrong, since
the example is supposed to work the way to describe it,
not the way the documentation said.

Ralph Johnson -- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign