Appeal No. 1997-2467 Page 2
Application No. 08/509,753
taken at runtime that could not be accomplished with a static
language.
Common Lisp (CL) is a dynamic language. It features
three types of functional objects: generic functions, ordinary
functions, and methods. An ordinary function cannot be added
to a generic function. A method cannot be invoked outside a
generic function, except in the very restricted context of
method combination, and then only using specialized syntax.
Besides these restrictions, however, ordinary functions and
methods provide the same functionality to a user. The
distinction therebetween complicates CL.
The appellants’ invention aims to allow a functional
object in a dynamic language to be used as both a directly-
invoked ordinary function and as a method in a generic
function. Their method object contiguously comprises a
header, a method-information field, a function prolog field,
and a method body. When called as a component of a generic
function, an entry point is at the method body or at the
method-information section. When called directly, another
entry point exists at the function prolog field. By combining
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007