Re: Generic functions: Specializers like `or' or `memq'?

[Emanuel Berg]

Michael Heerdegen wrote:

>> Is anyone else's brain incapable of maintaining the
>> distinction between "specializer" and "generalizer"?
>> I cannot remember which is which, or exactly how they
>> differ, and its one of the major obstacles to me actually
>> reading and understanding cl-generic.el.
>
> The manual doesn't even mention the term "generalizer".
> I don't have a clue. Is the term common in Common Lisp?
> The implementation in cl-generic is hard to understand
> without some previous knowledge.

Word ...

>From the `cl-generic-generalizers' docstring:

  It's called a generalizer because it takes a specific object
  and returns a more general approximation, denoting a set of
  objects to which it belongs.

Think of the -er suffix, e.g. toaster. It is the thing that
does things. Like MacGyver. A real man of action, right?

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal