Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!emory!att!cbnewsc!lgm From: lgm@cbnewsc.att.com (lawrence.g.mayka) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp.x Subject: Re: xlisp 2.1/winterp internals (26K long) Summary: CLOS treats everything as an object Message-ID: <1990Nov17.155836.23781@cbnewsc.att.com> Date: 17 Nov 90 15:58:36 GMT References: <8440@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 20 In article <8440@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>, toma@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Tom Almy) writes: > The only object oriented programming language I know of where everything > is an object is Smalltalk, but if you look at the implementation, it does > cheat at the low level to speed things up. Correction: the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS) indeed considers every entity to be an object - i.e, an instance of some class on which methods can specialize. Thus, one can specialize a method for integers, or symbols, or sequences. It is also true, however, that CLOS classes differ in their inheritance behavior according to metaclass (STANDARD-CLASS, STRUCTURE-CLASS, or BUILT-IN-CLASS); and it is also true that functionality may reside not only in methods but also in (unspecializable) functions and macros. Lawrence G. Mayka AT&T Bell Laboratories lgm@iexist.att.com Standard disclaimer.