Re: Best multimethods/multiple dispatch implementations?

On Sep 5, 1:20 pm, Christoffer Lernv <le...@dragonascendant.com>
wrote:
> I have been looking a bit at multiple dispatch.
>
> I know Dylan and CLOS also has implementations, but I heard CLOS'
> might be pretty slow.


CLOS dispatch is actually remarkably fast when well implemented. I
have tried replacing, in an inner loop, a generic function call (a
CLOS dispatch) with an ordinary function call, and got a much smaller
speedup than I expected. This was in an implementation (Franz
Allegro) with a well-optimized CLOS, but still I was pleasantly
surprised, particularly considering that the generic function in
question had a couple dozen methods.


I think anyone studying multiple dispatch -- particularly the
semantics, but also the implementation -- needs to look at CLOS very
carefully.


-- Scott

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