Can anyone confirm this? Or am I wrong?
That is exactly correct. It's a little implementation trick so that the format doesn't have to be "normalized" for allocation. It originates from the days when even a shift was too slow in allocation; personally I find it a little awkward.
Cheers, - Andreas
Michael Haupt wrote:
Hi,
apologies for the cross-post to two lists, but I wasn't too sure where to ask this.
I've just been browsing the VM sources for details on the encoding of class formats used in object instantiation.
Apparently, it seems as if the class format word that can be retrieved by sending #format to a class has the same layout as the standard header word of all objects. The only difference seems to be that the format word is shifted left by 1.
Can anyone confirm this? Or am I wrong?
Thanks,
Michael