[phobos] [Fwd: Re: Whiteholes and blackholes]

[Walter Bright]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: Whiteholes and blackholes
Date: 	Sun, 23 May 2010 17:58:48 -0700
From: 	Michael G Schwern <schwern at pobox.com>
To: 	Walter Bright <walter at digitalmars.com>
CC: 	sburke at cpan.org
References: 	<4BF9B6FB.8070107 at digitalmars.com>



On 2010.5.23 4:15 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> I've been looking for the origin of the terms as it applies to classes,
> as in:
> 
> http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/Class-BlackHole-0.04/lib/Class/BlackHole.pm
> 
> http://search.cpan.org/~mschwern/Class-WhiteHole-0.04/lib/Class/WhiteHole.pm
> 
> 
> Did you coin the terms, or is there some earlier reference? I'd like to
> give proper attribution.

I can answer definitively that mine came second and is a play on
Class::BlackHole.  It came from the sci-fi / astronomical idea of a "white
hole" being where all the stuff going into a black hole spews out.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/White_hole

I'm not aware of "white hole" used in programming terms before.  The pattern
may have been invented before, but its only applicable in languages which
contain some form of an inheritable "method does not exist" handler.  AFAIK
that includes Smalltalk, Perl and Ruby.  So its of fairly narrow application.


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