> I'm having trouble understanding the '>>' in some Smalltalk programs, Such

> as this, from Smalltalk By Example:

>

> MyClass>>doThis

> array := Array new: 3.

> array at: 1 put: 2.

>

> I can understand that we are creating a new 3-place instance of Array, named

> array, and putting 2 in the first slot. But I don't understand what MyClass,

> >>, or doThis are doing.

The ">>" is just a way of indicating that you're talking about a message name.

In your example, MyClass is the class name, and doThis is the message

name. You'll never actually enter the ">>" when defining a message,

instead you'd put the code in the doThis message of MyClass in the

browser.

You will also sometimes see something like:

Person class >> new

When someone is writing about code. This means that you should look on the

class side of Person for the method #new. People will also indicate the

method name with a symbol (for example #new) if they are writing the method

name in-lined in a sentence.