🚀 go-pugleaf

Just to complicate things:

This discussion seems to assume that the class-prototype is NOT
identical to a user-created instance.  However, the first time
ALLOCATE-INSTANCE was called on a class, an implementation could cache
the result as the prototype, unless the prototype already existed (or
even if it did?).  This could even be done all the way up the
superclass chain, thus allowing some classes to have the SAME
prototype.  One (probably misguided) argument for this behavior would
be that it saves space.

Of course, the prototype is often (usually?) needed BEFORE the user
instantiates a class.  Worse, the user might change the class of the
cached instance, and the implementation would then have to recover.

Still, is there anything in the MOP that proscribes a class prototype
from being identical to a user-created instance, or to another class's
prototype?

John Burger
john@mitre.org