[pro] Generated symbols

[Daniel Weinreb]

And if you ever wondered why CLOS makes you spell
out the names of readers and accessors, this is why.
CLOS does not want to make any assumptions about
how you want to make decisions about what
packages things are in.

It's the "right thing" rather than the "worse is better"
way, with all the usual issues.  In our own code,
we have a "define-class" macro that defines
all accessors automatically, interning them in
the package that makes sense for us. It's kind
of a middle path between defstruct and defclass.
I don't love it but I don't hate it...

-- Dan

On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Pascal J. Bourguignon <pjb at informatimago.com
> wrote:

> Kazimir Majorinc <kazimir at chem.pmf.hr>
> writes:
>
> > I need comprehensive review of use of generated symbols (make-symbol,
> > copy-symbol, gensym... ) in CL. The books I have (both Grahams,
> > Siebel, barely mention these operators, except for use of gensym in
> > macros.
> >
> > What are other typical or interesting uses of these?
>
> The most typical use, is a defstruct like macro, which derivates
> "public" names from a base name.
>
>
>   (DEFSTRUCT COLOR RED GREEN BLUE)
>
> generates function definitions for:
>
>   MAKE-COLOR COLOR-P COPY-COLOR COLOR-RED COLOR-GREEN COLOR-BLUE
>
>
> Ask yourself, what should:
>
>   (DEFSTRUCT other-package:|color| |Red| other-package:|GREEN| |blue|)
>
> generate?
>
> (And the effect *print-case* should or should not have on that...)
>
>
> --
> __Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
> A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.
>
>
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