Re: CLOS lambda-list congruence

[David A. Moon <Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>]

    Date: Thu, 15 Dec 88 09:52:13 PST
    From: kempf@Sun.COM

    This is a fundamentally different design from old Flavors 
    (but similar to new Flavors, see Moon's paper in the 1986 OOPSLA Proceedings). 

Just to set the record straight, the lambda list congruence rules in CLOS
are not based on New Flavors.  They are a new design that as far as I
know was not previously implemented.  I think they are correct, though.

It's true that there are legitimate applications for relaxing these
rules to require only that the number of required arguments be equal,
and making a new class of method would be one good way to do that.
Another possibility would be to invent an implementation-dependent
decoration of the lambda-list and an extension of the congruence rules
implemented by the standard classes of generic function and method
to take that decoration into account.