Re: Understanding Method Combination.

[Gregor.pa@Xerox.COM]

    Date: Wed, 15 Mar 89 12:02:44 PST
    From: James Rice <rice@sumex-aim.stanford.edu>

    As far as I know the MOP doesn't provide a way for a tool to find out
    about combined methods in a way in which the user/environment tools
    might be interested.

The MOP provides this behavior, and PCL implements a version of it.  In
fact, much of this is specified in chapters 1 and 2.

COMPUTE-APPLICABLE-METHODS (generic-function args)

  This accepts a generic function and a list of arguments and
  returns the ordered list of methods applicable to those arguments.

COMPUTE-EFFECTIVE-METHOD-BODY (generic-function methods)

  This takes a generic function and a list of methods and returns
  the `effective method body' of the effective method.  So, this
  does the actual method combination.  Note that the arguments to
  this will change slightly in a future release.


For example:

(defclass c1 () ())
(defclass c2 () ())
(defclass c3 (c1 c2) ())

(defmethod foo ((o c1)) ())
(defmethod foo :before ((o c2)) ())
(defmethod foo :before ((o c3)) ())
(defmethod foo :after  ((o c1)) ())

(compute-applicable-methods #'foo (list (*make-instance 'c3)))
==> (#<Standard-Method FOO :BEFORE (C3) 200020005> 
     #<Standard-Method FOO :AFTER (C1) 101000761>
     #<Standard-Method FOO (C1) 200020043>
     #<Standard-Method FOO :BEFORE (C2) 200020017>)

(compute-effective-method-body #'foo *)
==> (PROGN (CALL-METHOD #<Standard-Method FOO :BEFORE (C3) 200020005> NIL)
           (CALL-METHOD #<Standard-Method FOO :BEFORE (C2) 200020017> NIL)
           (MULTIPLE-VALUE-PROG1 (CALL-METHOD #<Standard-Method FOO (C1) 200020043> NIL)
                                 (CALL-METHOD #<Standard-Method FOO :AFTER (C1) 101000761> NIL)))

Which I believe is what you are asking for.

NOTE:
   In typing this message I discovered that there is a slight bug in 
   COMPUTE-APPLICABLE-METHODS.  You have to actually call the generic
   function once before COMPUTE-APPLICABLE-METHODS will work properly.
   This is now on my to fix list.
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