Extent of CALL-NEXT-METHOD

[Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM]

    Date: Mon, 12 Oct 87 16:58 EDT
    From: David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>

	Date: Mon, 12 Oct 87 13:29 PDT
	From: Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM

	It seems to me that this has to do with whether defmethod (and friends)
	replace the existing method or alter the existing method.  I thought
	defmethod replaced the existing method; so it seems to me that if the
	closure captures the method objects redefining one of the captured
	methods should have no effect on the closure.

    defmethod should behave consistently with defclass and defgeneric in
    this respect.  The latter two alter an existing object rather than
    creating a new object.

I am not sure that these nust behave consistently.  The objects being
defined are different.  A class is a large complex structure which is
linked with a lot of things, experience has shown it is useful to update
rather than replace it.  A method is smaller and less linked, it may be
reasonable to replace rather than update it.  I don't have a really
strong opinion about this (yet), I just wanted to point out that I don't
see consistency as a particularly strong argument here.
-------