MMD as an object.

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From:

Rod Adams

Date:

March 8, 2005 23:11

Subject:

MMD as an object.

Message ID:

422E9DA6.3070503@rodadams.net

It seems to me that there are several advantages to making a group of 
multi with the same short name a single object, of type 
MultiSub|MultiMethod, which internally holds references to the all the 
various routines that share that short name.

It would behave like a tied sub (or method), with a .dispatch method to 
decide which of the contained routines should be called this particular 
time. Manhattan would be the default. However, one can override the 
dispatch logic; implementing Luke's Patterns idea, for example.

This would also provide a relatively sane way to take a reference to a 
single contained routine. I would expect a .matching method which takes 
a list of types, and returns a reference to which routine would be 
called given parameters of those types. Or one could get a reference to 
the entire multi via C< my $ref = &multi; >. I don't think there has 
been syntax introduced thus far that enables this ability. But it's 
likely I missed it along the way, like I seem to be missing several 
other things lately.

Another thing I haven't seen is how to declare a new multi at runtime. 
Non-multi's can be created via C< &func := sub {...}; >, but that's 
destructive to any other routines that might have occupied that 
namespace. Using the object model, one could do this with C< &func.add( 
sub {...}); >. There could also be a .delete method to remove a routine 
already in the multi (give it a reference to uniquely identify it). Of 
course, Luke would need to override the .add method to one that doesn't 
throw errors when more than one routine with the same type signature is 
thrown.

If this happens, I would expect that C< multi > would become a macro 
which creates the multi of that short name if it doesn't already exist, 
and then perform an .add to that multi.



There are likely several rough edges in here, and I've by no means 
convinced myself that this is the Right Thing, but I thought I'd throw 
the idea out there to what others thought of it.

-- Rod Adams.

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