Issue DEFGENERIC-DECLARE Writeup

Issue:         DEFGENERIC-DECLARE


References:    88-002R p.2-27


Category:      ADDITION


Edit history:  29-Apr-90, Version 1 by Moon

               30-Apr-90, Version 2 by Moon (update current practice)


Problem description:


  DEFGENERIC only allows DECLARE to appear once, which is inconsistent with

  DEFUN, which allows any number of DECLAREs.


  This is Symbolics issue #23.


Proposal (DEFGENERIC-DECLARE:ALLOW-MULTIPLE):


  Allow the DECLARE option to appear multiple times in a DEFGENERIC form.

  The multiple declarations are appended together.


Rationale:


  Programmers rely on the syntactic analogy between DEFGENERIC and DEFUN.


  Note that some implementations allow several implementation-dependent

  declarations in DEFGENERIC, so the list of declarations in a DEFGENERIC

  could be quite long.


Current practice:


  Symbolics Genera 8.0 only allows DECLARE to appear once.

  Lucid 4.0.0 Beta-1 allows DECLARE to appear multiple times.


Cost to Implementors:


  Easy.


Cost to Users:


  None.


Cost of non-adoption:


  DEFGENERIC would be inconsistent with all other forms that allow DECLARE

  to be used to specify declarations.


Performance impact:


  None.


Benefits:


  More consistent language.


Esthetics:


  More consistent language.


Discussion:


  None.