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From: rewari@osu-eddie.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.lang.smalltalk
Subject: A small question.
Message-ID: <3653@osu-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 4-Jun-87 15:24:47 EDT
Article-I.D.: osu-eddi.3653
Posted: Thu Jun  4 15:24:47 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 6-Jun-87 09:01:57 EDT
Sender: rewari@osu-eddie.UUCP
Organization: Ohio State Univ, Computer Science Department
Lines: 21

From: Pawan Rewari <rewari>

A small but fundamental question came up in a talk we had recently. I
thought someone in net-land might help.

In the expression	sum <- 3 + 4
a message is sent to the object 3 (receiver) to execute the method '+'
with the object '4' as argument. The receiver '3' then returns a new
object '7' which will become the new object referred to by the variable 'sum'.

The question is whether there is a single object '7' in the system and
is a pointer to this object returned
	or
Does the primitive method '+' creates a new instance of an object with value
'7' and returns a pointer to it.

Also, everything is an object in smalltalk, so what is the distinction
between the value of an object and an object itself.

Please address your responses to me.
Thanks in advance..................................	pawan.