I was playing with ScaledDecimal when doing experiments with numbers in Pharo.

Now, ScaledDecimal says in its comment:

"Note that a ScaledDecimal does not printOn: exactly, however it will storeOn: exactly because the full precision fraction is kept in memory."

This happens to be right when inspecting the expressions.

Now, I tried to do the following:

x := 2 asScaledDecimal.�

y := 1 asScaledDecimal.

z := (y / x).

z storeOn: Transcript.

And z storeOn: Transcript fails miserably.

This is due to storeOn: doing:

storeOn: aStream�

"ScaledDecimal sometimes have more digits than they print (potentially an infinity).

In this case, do not use printOn: because it would loose some extra digits"

self shouldBePrintedAsLiteral

ifTrue: [self printOn: aStream]

ifFalse: [aStream

nextPut: $(;

store: numerator;

nextPut: $/;

store: denominator;

nextPut: $s;

store: scale;

nextPut: $)]

And store: doesn't exists in the�ThreadSafeTranscript which happens to be no stream at all.

Try this out:�

x := 2 asScaledDecimal.�

y := 1 asScaledDecimal.

z := (y / x).

"works"

5.0 storeOn: Transcript.

Transcript flush.

"works"

(1/2) storeOn: Transcript.

Transcript flush.

"fails"

z storeOn: Transcript.

Transcript flush.

"works"

s := (String new: 30).

st := s writeStream.

z storeOn: st.

Transcript�

show: 'storeOn: ', st contents;

cr;

show: z.

Kind of annoying to do while explaining to kids.

The ThreadSafe transcript looks like to be subclassed from Object and being no real stream at all.

Why is it so?�

Phil