Re: MML dispatch

[TSa (Thomas Sandlaß)]

HaloO Larry,

you wrote:

On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 08:13:22PM +0200, "TSa (Thomas Sandlaß)" wrote:
: Actually it's a pitty, that the multi method call syntax isn't as
: rich as the single method call syntax where we have .?method, .+method
: and .*method. Something like (Snoopy, Mr_PotatoHead, HopeDiamond).*foo
: doesn't exist, right? Or is it foo.*(Snoopy, Mr_PotatoHead, HopeDiamond)?

It doesn't seem to make much practical sense.  Multimethods are
generally written to be exclusive of ancestral methods.  Ordinary
methods are generally written to be cumulative with ancestral methods.

Interesting that we are thinking in orthogonal ways. I was arguing
for a syntax that allows the caller to prevent 'no method' and 'method
ambiguous' errors with .?() and .+() respectively. And .*() would prevent
both. In the ambiguous case all applicable targets would be called in an
undefined order.

Is there also an answer to the odering versus metric question?
Why was the former rejected and the latter choosen?
--
TSa (Thomas Sandlaß)