Tim Olson wrote:
> 
> Hi, all:
> 
> Here's a cute trick / crufty hack I recently posted to
> comp.lang.smalltalk.  It was in regards to someone complaining that they
> had to recreate a bunch of methods when using a delegate to implement
> multiple-inheritance-like operation.  Instead of manually doing this
> (painful) or dynamically doing this by implementing doesNotUnderstand:
> (slow), why not combine the two and have the doesNotUnderstand: method
> install the custom-created method?
> 
> Comments?

The technique was the basis of Dan Ingalls' and Allan Borning's multiple
inheritance system for Smalltalk-80 v2.0.  An instance of a class with
multiple superclasses checked its extra superclasses for methods in
doesNotUnderstand: and recompiled them in its own class so that the next
time it was sent there would be no doesNotUnderstand:.  The scheme
maintained a dependency graph so that if one changed a method (either
modified or deleted) that was copied all the copies would be removed. 
When a class with multiple superclasses was first created for all
selectors that had more than one reachable implementation, i.e.
ambiguous methods, the class would create a method that did ^self
conflictingInheritanceError.  The programmer could then resolve the
ambiguities as required.

The implementation was buggy; self was not renamed when copying down;
conflicting inheritance methods overrode the resolutions if you
redefined the class; redefining superclasses could cause bugs due to the
traversal machinery expecting a tree and not a graph, etc.

Evewn with these bugs fixed the general feeling was that it was too
complex.  The best alternative I've seen is Gilad Bracha's mixin-based
multiple inheritance scheme.
        http://java.sun.com/people/gbracha/mwp.html
_______________,,,^..^,,,_______________
Eliot Miranda