Re: Unified name properties

[Marius Vollmer]

Dirk Herrmann <address@hidden> writes:

> Why shouldn't an object have several names?  If you do (define foo car),
> then you might want to get '(foo car) when you ask for the name of the
> corresponding function object.

I think it is most helpful when objects have a clearly designated
primary name (or no name at all).  They might have secondary `aka'
names in addition, but only one should be the preferred name.

We might have a second property `secondary-names' or something like
that if it turns out to be really desirable.

That is

    (define goo car)

should not change the primary name of the `car' object, but it might
add to the secondary names.

I would argue that only this form

    (define (foo) ...)

should give a name to the created function, while this

    (define foo (lambda () ...))

should not.

> In any case, I think that giving names to objects is something that should
> only be done automatically during debugging.

I don't think giving names to objects is very expensive (but maybe it
is, we should measure this).  The new property mechanism has a way to
lazily compute values for generics, and this can be used to retrieve
names that are expensive to find, for example from the debugging
information coming with compiled code.