On 02 Jun 2012, at 11:07, Igor Stasenko wrote: > On 2 June 2012 10:28, Stefan Marr <smallt...@stefan-marr.de> wrote: >> Hi Sean: >> >> On 02 Jun 2012, at 05:07, Sean P. DeNigris wrote: >> >>> During the process, I noticed that the Blue Book specifies that #fork >>> returns the block itself (pg. 252), while in Pharo it returns the process >>> (see #testFork in the slice). Should our implementation be changed to match >>> the Blue Book? >> >> Why would it be desirable to have the block? > >> How would you obtain the process object after your change? >> > by using #newProcess. > > using the return value of fork provokes you to write incorrect concurrent > code. > for instance, i found once, some code which assumes that forked > process not yet started, > or not yet terminated, and people trying to do something with process > immediately after issuing #fork.
So, just because somebody made a mistake, the whole thing is not worthwhile anymore? What is the value of having the direct reference to the block? What are you going to do with it? I would buy an argument that #fork should return a promise (or you can call it future if you like) to the return value of the block. I don't see how the block itself would be of any use. I do see however, that the block (i.e., self) was returned in earlier versions just because of convention, and no further thought. [Some people claim that the whole idea of Process in Smalltalk was never fully thought out anyway. (And that's not me.)] Best regards Stefan -- Stefan Marr Software Languages Lab Vrije Universiteit Brussel Pleinlaan 2 / B-1050 Brussels / Belgium http://soft.vub.ac.be/~smarr Phone: +32 2 629 2974 Fax: +32 2 629 3525
