Re: Overriding 'Class'Input (was: List container strawman 1.1)

[Ted Dennison<dennison@telepath.com>]

In article <9u3i3t$211$1@nh.pace.co.uk>, Marin David Condic says...
>It also seems to explain where the 'Read and 'Write are useful since after
>initially looking at them, I didn't know why I'd want them if they didn't
>write out the tags, etc. (The 'Input and 'Output seem to be what you
>normally want to use - getting them automagically by defining 'Read and
>'Write makes more sense.)

Well, if you want to read in a large structure, you'd probably be better off
using 'Read just because there won't be an extra assignment involved. Also, I
don't find 'Input all that useful because you have to have some idea of the size
of the object in order to safely call it anyway. I use it for strings sometimes,
but not for anything else. As for 'Class'whatever: since you have to know the
exact types of all your non-tagged types when you use streams, it isn't really
all that helpful to not have to know the exact type of your tagged types. It
could be useful if you want to dynamicly dispatch on the result, (or for
restoring a hetrogenious array from which you'd like to dynamicly dispacth
later) but I've yet to need that myself. So in practice, I find I mostly use the
simple procedural forms. But perhaps that's just me.

I'll give you this: if it turns out I'm wrong about 'Read being used by 'Input,
I'll add 'Input and 'Output into the strawman as well. It was certinaly my
intention for those to be available too.

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