Re: next-methods

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

    Date: 24 Sep 87 10:52 PDT
    From: Masinter.pa@Xerox.COM

    What's next-methods for? I'm having trouble imagining a use, and no
    trouble imagining difficulties implementing it. In particular, it means
    that you need to provide access to the entire list of subsequent methods
    rather than just the next one.

In my envisioned implementation the list would not be materialized unless
someone actually called next-methods, and I think none of the mechanism
would be present unless there was actually a lexical reference to next-methods.
That is, the generic function works slightly differently if somewhere in
the effective method, next-methods is used.  Much the same thing will be
done for call-next-method.

If I hadn't been thinking along those lines, I might have made the same
objection you raised.