Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!hookup!swrinde!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!netcom9!jrd
From: jrd@netcom9.netcom.com (Jon Degenhardt)
Subject: Re: Two Dylan Questions
In-Reply-To: carroll@quadriga.cis.udel.edu's message of 04 Jan 1995 17:08:58 GMT
Message-ID: <JRD.95Jan5155003@netcom9.netcom.com>
Sender: jrd@netcom.com (Jon Degenhardt)
Organization: NETCOM On-line services
References: <rloD1tKCG.7D6@netcom.com> <CARROLL.95Jan4120858@quadriga.cis.udel.edu>
Date: Thu, 5 Jan 1995 23:50:02 GMT
Lines: 30

In article <CARROLL.95Jan4120858@quadriga.cis.udel.edu> Mark C. Chu-Carroll writes:

>  >>>>> "Robert" == Robert Orenstein <rlo@netcom.com> writes:
> Robert> Does this mean (and my experimentation leads me to belive that
> Robert> it does) that there is no way to have two methods with the
> Robert> same name unless they have the same number of parameters?  If
> Robert> so, why was this choice made?  Doesn't this require the
> Robert> programmer to know the names of all methods in any library
> Robert> they're using in order to avoid conflicts in method names?
> Robert> And doesn't this work against one of the main benefits of
> Robert> object oriented programming?  If this is indeed a limitation,
> Robert> are there any workarounds?
>
> Dylan programs are based on generic functions. A generic function is
> theoretically a *single* function, which has a collection of
> implementations (methods) attached to it. One of those implementations
> is dynamically selected on the basis of the types of the required
> (specializing) arguments.

A question about this. Is there a name conflict issue when using software
supplied by different sources? eg. You purchase a set of gui widgets from
one vendor and a set of i/o utilities from another, and put them both in
one program. Are there mechanisms the library vendors can use avoid name
conflicts? If not, can such name conflicts be resolved by the programmer
using the two libraries? I'm mostly thinking about this from the point of
view of having a healthy marketplace for the independent development of
Dylan tools. 

--Jon Degenhardt
  DocuMagix Inc.
