$! is not classified as a binary character right now, is it?
Of course it's possible but I'd just say why this particular symbol?

It does not look mathematical either. Or do you love C/C++ so much?

Note that ~= has same meaning in Matlab.

There are other possibilities like /=�� or <> (Fortran 95, ADA), even the long form =/=.

But frankly, I don't buy this kind of change, for the sake of looking like some {} language, making such a deep change is overkill.

In any case, a big -1 for !=

2014-06-26 10:47 GMT+02:00 Max Leske <maxleske@gmail.com>:

On 26.06.2014, at 10:15, Christophe Demarey <Christophe.Demarey@inria.fr> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I would like to make a suggestion that may lead to a long debate but let's go: What do you think about deprecating ~= and replace it with != for example?

> Why? In mathematics the symbol ~ is used for equivalence. To me (and I think any newcomer to Smalltalk) the first guess of the meaning of ~= is equivalent to => missed. The meaning is totally different: "Answer whether the receiver and the argument do not represent the same object.��

+1
But then I also want to suggest #!== for negating identity.

>
> I never used this method because it is too confusing for me. I prefer to use (a = b) not or (a = b) ifFalse:.
> So, the discussion is open ...
>
> Christophe