Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!white
From: white@scs.carleton.ca (Paul White)
Subject: Re: PP Smalltalk R4 Query, Bug?
Message-ID: <1991Mar12.192911.28770@ccs.carleton.ca>
Sender: news@ccs.carleton.ca (news)
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada
References: <4931@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au> <1991Mar8.140425.10863@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1991Mar11.170449.1386@cua.cary.ibm.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 1991 19:29:11 GMT

Just to add my 2 cents worth, a more probable explanation for the semantics
of the add: (and at:put:) message returning the arguement as opposed to 
the receiver is to keep it consistent with the remove: protocol.  

Consider this: since when you 'pop' an item from a stack you expect to get the  
popped item back, why shouldn't you get the 'pushed' item back when you
send a push: message.  The semantics should be the same for all collections,
be it stacks or dictionaries.

Paul White
white@scs.carleton.ca