From: Robert Feldt <feldt@...>
Date: 2002-09-13T20:42:42+09:00
Subject: Re: not grasping the method overloading/multi-dispatch thing

On Fri, 13 Sep 2002, Nikodemus Siivola wrote:
>
> On Fri, 13 Sep 2002, Pit Capitain wrote:
>
> > Paul, in the former thread Robert Feldt showed another
> > implementation in [ruby-talk:26792] that lets you do what you
> > asked for. I came up with the following implementation based on
>
Thanks for the credit Pit; your solution is nice. I'm still not sure
whether more complex dispatch would really add something to Ruby or not.
I think David's "philosophical" concers are what matters the most; to me
the technical issues can be solved if matz and/or the community want.

If someone want to get serious about the *technical* side of this be sure
not to miss the papers/links:

Efficient Dynamic Multimethod Dispatch
http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dynlangs/Talks/multimethod-dispatch.htm

Predicate Dispatching: A Unified Theory of Dispatch
http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/projects/cecil/www/pubs/gud.html

Efficient Multiple and Predicate Dispatching
http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/chambers99efficient.html

and recent papers by the same authors; at least they were the state of the
art a year ago.

Well I'm off again,

Robert Feldt