[M3devel] small objects

[hendrik at topoi.pooq.com]

On Tue, Apr 07, 2009 at 04:55:12PM +1000, Tony Hosking wrote:
> After all of this -- I may simply be coming back around to your  
> original proposal -- why not simply declare:
> 
> TaggedInteger.T = REFANY;

You'd be adding a range of integers to the set of things a REFANY could 
hold.  Might that enable one to pass these integers as REFANYs to 
existing code that isn't expecting it?  Might code that checks its input 
for suitable preconditions then let this case slide?  Or would any test 
that checks that a REFANY holds an appropriate reference or NIL 
automatically manage to exclude tagged integers, just as it excludes 
inappropriate references?

I don't mind the proposed semantics for REFANY -- if it had been 
there from the beginning.  But with a lot of existing code in existing 
libraries, would it be safer to use a new type for this new meaning?

You could, of course, stull have an unsafe module that defines

TaggedInteger.T = NEWTYPEWITHNEWNAME;

-- hendrik