20110130

All things being equal...

Alright, this has been floating around for some time and it is time to write it up.

Several object-oriented languages (e.g., Java, Ruby, C++, etc.) have ways to define equality and comparison operators or methods. In Java the Object class defines the equals method, which can be specialized in user code and the Comparable<T> interface.

In Common Lisp, while all the machinery is there to provide such facilities, there has been no push to provide them. I think there are two reasons for this. The first one lies in the widespread use of :test keywords and the programming style it encourages, especially when writing libraries. The second in the influential KMP's paper on The Best of Intentions: EQUAL Rights - and Wrongs - in Lisp.

The first reason does not really needs discussing, the second, a bit. In my honest opinion, there are no real reasons not to have a notion of generic equality (and comparisons) on top of the standard :test machinery, provided that some caution is taken.

Having said so, I built methods for the following generic functions.

(defgeneric AEQUALIS (a b &rest keys &key recursive-p &allow-other-keys)
 (:method ((a T) (b T) &rest keys &key recursive-p &allow-other-keys)
    (eq a b))
 )

(defgeneric COMPARE (a b &rest keys &key recursive-p &allow-other-keys)
   ...)

AEQUALIS is Latin for "equal". The generic function COMPARE returns <, >, =, or /=.

I prepared a specification for them (and an implementation) in order to post a CDR. You can find it in the CLEQCMP directory on my Google docs.

Comments welcome.

Enjoy


(cheers)

20110107

NEW project on common-lisp.net

There is a NEW project on common-lisp.net. The new-op pages contain documentation and download instructions to get the code for the new operator in Common Lisp I described in a previous post.
(cheers)