What is a literal? Well ....
A literal is an sequence of characters in the source language which denotes a constant in the target. (somehow an always should be in there somewhere)
I think we can think of nil, true and false as literals, if we just didn't have the combined forms #nil, etc. It would just mean nil, false, and true become reserved words, and then the previously mentioned problem with defining array literals.
Jerry.
All of the talk about nil vs. #nil leads me to wonder: where is Squeak defined? As the language changes, where does one find the definition for a specific release? If the definition of the #() array syntax were to change, where would I be expected to look for the official definition?
(This does not imply I am expecting anyone to maintain a formal definition of the Squeak language, but I think the question is a useful one to raise. I'd rather have Squeak central hacking neat stuff and saying things like "Squeak release X.Y is like Smalltalk-80 except for the things we changed in the past and we just added such and such to be the definition of array literals.)
All of the talk about nil vs. #nil leads me to wonder: where is Squeak defined? As the language changes, where does one find the definition
IAFIK there's no formal definition for Squeak. Squeak could of course follow either the definition of VisualWorks or the ANSI standard, but currently the only source is the Compiler class itself.
(A techological backstep IMHO, because all languages since Algol-58 (which was the first language with a formal definition) should have one)
bye -- Stefan Matthias Aust // Are you ready to discover the twilight zone?
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Stefan Matthias Aust