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Re: new <> nil (was: Re: new folderItem)

To: REALbasic Betas <realbasic-betas at lists dot realsoftware dot com>
Subject: Re: new <> nil (was: Re: new folderItem)
From: Robert Steely <robsteely at nc dot rr dot com>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 22:27:53 -0400
On Friday, October 25, 2002, at 09:56  PM, Lars Jensen wrote:

We had a huge discussion about this a few months back. The "New"
operator is physically incapable of returning nil. It cannot do so
under any circumstances.

Ah, maybe while I was on vacation...thanks for the repeat. Otherwise I would have been adding nil checks to all my code...which is a good argument for
having it be the way it is...

Actually, the fact that New cannot return Nil took many of us by surprise. And as you pointed out, it's contrary to what's in the documentation. Had Joe Strout not mentioned it while working on the Offworld project, I wouldn't have known either.

You should keep in mind though that some specialized functions such as NewPicture can return Nil if they're programmed to do so. It's just the generic New operator that cannot.

If I had my way, New would still not return Nil, but would throw an OutOfMemoryException, so I could trap it and handle it as I see fit.

Bob


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