[113] in Coldmud discussion meeting

Re: Proposed change regarding MI ambiguities

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Sat Dec 11 03:30:16 1993 )

From: stewarta@netcom.com (Alex Stewart)
To: coldstuff@MIT.EDU
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1993 00:22:48 -0800 (PST)

I don't understand.  Are you proposing that if a method call or a pass is
ambiguous that it throws an error and that's it?  There's no way to call those
methods at all if there's an ambiguity in the way?  This can't possibly be what
you're suggesting, but it seems like it.  How are things supposed to handle
such a thrown error?  Is there a way to specify which ancestor's method to use
and call it?

Even if there is, I have a problem with something alluded to by Andy, which is
that in the structure:

    A
  B   C
    D

if the method 'foo' is defined on B only, everything works fine and people can
call D.foo etc, but if at a later date someone decides to make a C.foo, it then
breaks D and every descendent of D for that method, which might by that time be
being used by countless other things.  This is not good.  Merely Adding a
method should not cripple an entire heirarchy of other objects.

I can see why ambiguities could be a problem as is, but it's my feeling that
they're far, far less of a problem currently then they would be with an
error-based system.

-Richelieu