From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2001-11-29T22:26:24+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:26891] Re: overload possible?

Hi,

Isn't a drawback with all the solutions based on dispatching to a block
that you need to rewrite the overloaded routine each time? Is that a
realistic assumption?

I'm thinking if I want to overload Fixnum#+ because it should have a
special behavior when argument is my new class then I'd have to revert to
an alias-redefine-and-call scheme, right?

I know my kludgy solution used an ugly "global" db but isn't that the way
to go if you want something like multi-methods dispatch?

And can someone knowledgeable about Dylan multi-method dispatch and/or
paraisitc method describe them briefly? I think we can extend the proposed
solutions to a "real" overload module without too much hassle. Still don't
know if its something one would use but at least it would let us
experiment with multi-method dispatch to see if it would add something to
Ruby.

Regards,

Robert