On Wed, Aug 29, 2001 at 10:49:25PM -0700, Hong Zhang wrote: > What is the need for CLOS? Are we trying to build a kitchen > sink here? Umm, I think you mean "What's the need for multiple dispatch?" Currently, if I want to write a method that does this: my $name = $foo->name; $foo->name($name); I have to write: sub name { my($self) = shift; if( @_ ) { my $name = shift; $self->{name} = $name; } return $self->{name}; } With multiple dispatch, I could instead write: # Following RFC 256 sub name (Foo $self) : multi { return $self->{name}; } sub name (Foo $self, STRING $name) : multi { $self->{name} = $name; return $self->{name}; } which is quite a bit simpler. -- Michael G. Schwern <schwern@pobox.com> http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/ Perl6 Quality Assurance <perl-qa@perl.org> Kwalitee Is Job One My lips, your breast and a whole lotta strange arguing.Thread Previous | Thread Next