Re: Classes with forward-referenced supers.

[kanderso@DINO.BBN.COM]

  Redistributed: commonloops.pa
  Date: Tue, 30 Jan 90 22:57:52 PST
  From: Trent Lange <lange@cs.ucla.edu>
  To: commonloops.pa@xerox.com
  Subject: Classes with forward-referenced supers.
  
  
  What is the official word on making instances when a class has
  forward-referenced super-classes?
  
  e.g. (defclass a (b) (...) (...))
       (make-instance 'a)
  
  This worked in the "Can't think of a cute name PCL" (12/7/88), but
  caused crashes in Victoria Day PCL.  Mike Thome sent out a patch to
  allocate-instance back in August 89 that instead signalled an error
  when it noticed it instead of crashing.  I grabbed the 1/1/90 alpha PCL,
  to see what it did, and it also signalled an error rather than making
  the instance.
  
  I don't see anything in CLOS Document 88-002R (the latest I could find
  on arisia.xerox.com's pcl/doc) that mentions this.
  
  It seems to me that making instances of classes with forward-referenced
  supers definitely *should* be legal, simply creating an instance that
  is minus the features of those forward-referenced classes.  When the
  forward-referenced supers are actually defined, of course, PCL 
  would then have to update any previously created instances, but this is
  no different than when the class itself is redefined.
  
  On the other hand, it seems *quite* important to be able to make instances
  when all of the super-classes are not yet defined.  Applying
  class-prototypes comes directly to mind, plus defining classes with lists
  of possible super-class mixins, which either may or may not be used
  depending upon whether a user wants to load them or not.
  
  So, is making an instance of a class with forward-referenced supers going
  to be an official error, or will it be considered legal, in which case it
  will be fixed in the next version of PCL?
  
I think your proposal is interesting.  However, if you could create an
instance of a forward referenced class, you would loose the protection
that the current PCL provides.  There would be no way to stop the use
from making instances when some important behavior was still missing.
If he never intends to use a set of mixins, redefining the class is
about as easy as not loading the file containing the mixins.

k