GST, and Smalltalk in general, has many more places in which to search for variables than most programming systems. Besides instance variables, in-class and inherited, the compiler has to search a number of pools:

• All inherited namespaces and their superspaces
• All inherited class pools
• All inherited shared pools

Traditionally, GST's search order has been somewhat idiosyncratic. This isn't a problem, of course, until you start making name clashes.