On Oct 6, 2009, at 10:03 AM, Petr Vácha wrote:

Hi there, sorry for contacting you directly, there are reasons why I do not have a Google account. Sorry for that.

but you do not have too. the mail-ling is free access.

I believe I found cool bug (probably in Squeak VM, also affects Exupery VM), but also other Smalltalks are affected, incl. Smalltalk/X, Cuis and Squeak itself .. not checked with Visual Works though.

Just try to inspect "a:=Array new: SmallInteger maxVal." and see what is value of "a" variable - interestingly, primitive (in Squeak VM, primitive 71) DOES NOT fail on too big arguments (however, it fails on negative arguments). What is interesting is that Smalltalk/X crashes, while Cuis, Pharo a Squeak actually assign "a" a value - check yourself what is assigned (depends on Smalltalk variant). No Smalltalk variant I checked fails a primitive.

Maybe it is on purpose, but I believe this situation shall be somehow signalled to developer as "Array>>new:" method did not provide what is expected (returns junk).

In case of a miscall, sorry for your time.

Greets, Petr Vacha