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From: peters@sirius.UVic.CA (Doug  Peters)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: GNU Smalltalk-1.1 problems
Message-ID: <PETERS.91Jun19104522@yates.UVic.CA>
Date: 19 Jun 91 17:44:19 GMT
Sender: news@sol.UVic.CA
Distribution: comp.lang.smalltalk
Organization: University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada
Lines: 67
Nntp-Posting-Host: yates.uvic.ca


Is there a trick to this?

Granted, I am almost a novice at Smalltalk, but I thought that I was
asking GNU Smalltalk-1.1 to do some pretty basic things...

For example, I have a Complex class (I chose to make this a subclass
of Number because I wanted "isKindOf: Number" to still work)
So I have a file called "Complex.st", which looks like:
"------------------------------------------------>8"
Number variableSubclass: #Complex
        instanceVariableNames: 're im '
        classVariableNames: ''
        poolDictionaries: ''
        category: ''!

!Complex methodsFor:'accessing'!

re: aNumber im: anotherNumber
  re := aNumber.
  im := anotherNumber! !

!Complex class methodsFor: 'instance creation'!

re:aNumber im:anotherNumber "<- this is line 15"
  | a |
  a := super new.
  a re:aNumber im:anotherNumber. "<- this is line 18"
  ^a! !
"------------------------------------------------>8"
(it used to be a lot longer, but this gets the point across)
anyway,

st> FileStream fileIn:'Complex.st' !
produces:

"Complex.st", line 15: parse error
"Complex.st", line 15: Invalid message pattern
"Complex.st", line 18: Error in expression
"Complex.st", line 18: parse error
"Complex.st", line 18: Invalid message pattern
"Complex.st", line 19: Error in expression

The same errors occur even if I change the class method to real:imag:
(so much for polymorphism)... 
any hints (re:strategy _or_ implementation :-)?

Another example: I want a Matrix class, so I

st> ArrayedCollection variableSubclass: #Matrix
st> 	instanceVariableNames: 'nrow ncol '
st> 	classVariableNames: ''
st> 	poolDictionaries: ''
st>	category: ''!

and I get:

ArrayedCollection error: cannot create a variable subclass from a
non-pointer variable parent class

I am quite sure that that was the invocation in PP-ST80,
and I am not even sure what the error message is telling me...

again, any hints?

Thanks in advance
  Doug Peters      (peters@sirius.uvic.ca)