Aaron Sherman wrote:
In the RFC, I was trying to develop a method by which a module could assert a stricture (consider this part of "use strict" in Perl 6 if you will) that would constrain the CALLER of that module (as well as the module itself, of course) to a particular signature template for a multi. This allows us to centrally document a multi that might be defined in many places, and have that documentation actively constrain the multi to match. In this way, the user doesn't have to figure out that max is a method on Array in order to find its documentation, and a module that uses Array gets
Um, so if I get this right, you want to restrict the users of the module from *EVER* extending that particular part of the module's functionality?
I would be strongly opposed to the existence of this feature. Firstly, what you propose is not DBC. Design by contract is about requiring minimal functionality from the parties in the contract, not about banning them from going above the requirements. Secondly, what happens when you use two modules with two different prototypes for the same multi? Without this declaration, and assuming the modules don't try to dispatch on the same argument lists, everything just works. But with this stricture, you simply aren't allowed to do this, and I don't see any justification for it. Frankly, sometimes things -will- be named the same and yes, sometimes you need to use grep to find the docs. Not sure why this is a problem, though.
Miro
