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Clarify documentation for "instance?"


From: Alan Grover
Subject: Clarify documentation for "instance?"
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2005 10:12:25 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 0.7 (X11/20040615)

Guile Documentation: Goops Manual, no version # in documentation
Guile Release: 1.6.4

The behavior of "instance?" needs clarification with regards to non-Goops entities.

There are many entities in Guile that can be used like a Goops object, but which aren't implemented as a Goops object. This allows native data types to be used in generic-procedure specialization, by giving them a class and class-hierarchy, etc. You can even ask almost everything for its class, via "class-of".

On the procedure side, there is a mechanism to allow many procedures to be specialized (see generic-capability?, for example).

However, "instance?" only returns true for a Goops object.

The documentation for "instance?", and perhaps in another section, should note the distinction between a Goops object and "things you can use like it". It should also give the definition of a Goops object (the result of "make"?).

--
Alan Grover
address@hidden
+1.734.476.0969




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