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9.7: Chapter Summary

  • Page ID
    39185
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    The Smalltalk collection hierarchy provides a common vocabulary for uniformly manipulating a variety of different kinds of collections.

    • A key distinction is between SequenceableCollections, which maintain their elements in a given order, Dictionary and its subclasses, which maintain key-to-value associations, and Sets and Bags, which are unordered.
    • You can convert most collections to another kind of collection by sending them the messages asArray, asOrderedCollection etc..
    • To sort a collection, send it the message asSortedCollection.
    • Literal Arrays are created with the special syntax #( ... ). Dynamic Arrays are created with the syntax { ... }.
    • A Dictionary compares keys by equality. It is most useful when keys are instances of String. An IdentityDictionary instead uses object identity to compare keys. It is more suitable when Symbols are used as keys, or when mapping object references to values.
    • Strings also understand the usual collection messages. In addition, a String supports a simple form of pattern-matching. For more advanced application, look instead at the RegEx package.
    • The basic iteration message is do:. It is useful for imperative code, such as modifying each element of a collection, or sending each element a message.
    • Instead of using do:, it is more common to use collect:, select:, reject:, includes:, inject:into: and other higher-level messages to process collections in a uniform way.
    • Never remove an element from a collection you are iterating over. If you must modify it, iterate over a copy instead.
    • If you override =, remember to override hash as well!

    This page titled 9.7: Chapter Summary is shared under a CC BY-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Andrew P. Black, Stéphane Ducasse, Oscar Nierstrasz, Damien Pollet via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.