Re: GOOPS: object-equal?

[Mikael Djurfeldt]

Marko Rauhamaa <address@hidden> writes:

> The GOOPS documentation states that one should use object-eqv? and
> object-equal? instead of eqv? and equal?. Furthermore, goops.scm makes
> it look like the object-eq... methods get called from the guile core:
>
> ========================================================================
> ;;;
> ;;; {Standard methods used by the C runtime}
> ;;;
>
> ;;; Methods to compare objects
> ;;;
>
> (define-method (object-eqv? x y)    #f)
> (define-method (object-equal? x y)  (eqv? x y))
> ========================================================================
>
> However, I have found no guile code calling these methods, and my call
> to "member" definitely does not get routed to object-equal?.
>
> Is this a bug or a feature?

It was a feature, however one could regard the comments in goops.scm
as a bug.

> Should I not be able to override equal? for my classes? Should there
> be separate series of generic functions for lists, alists, hash
> tables and alike?

Well, I think you at least should be able to provide methods which
specialize eqv? and equal? to userdefined classes.  This has been
planned for long, but I missed doing it before the 1.6 release.

However, I've introduced it in 1.6.4 (and current 1.6 and HEAD CVS),
and updated the documentation.

Mikael D.