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# 2. Instances

An instance is a compound data structure much like a record, except that it is defined by a class rather than a record type descriptor. Instances are more powerful than records, because their representation is designed to support inheritance, while the representation of records is not.

Procedure: instance-constructor class slot-names [n-init-args]
  Creates and returns a procedure that, when called, will create and return a newly allocated instance of class.

  Class must be a subclass of `<instance>`. Slot-names must be a list of symbols, each of which must be the name of a slot in class. N-init-args will be described below.

  In its basic operation, `instance-constructor` works much like `record-constructor`: the slot-names argument specifies how many arguments the returned constructor accepts, and each of those arguments is stored in the corresponding slot of the returned instance. Any slots that are not specified in slot-names are given their initial values, as specified by the `initial-value` or `initializer` slot properties; otherwise they are left uninitialized.

  After the new instance is created and its slots filled in, but before it is returned, it is passed to the generic procedure `initialize-instance`. Normally, `initialize-instance` does nothing, but because it is always called, the programmer can add methods to it to specify an initialization that is to be performed on every instance of the class.

  By default, `initialize-instance` is called with one argument, the newly created instance. However, the optional argument n-init-args can be used to specify additional arguments that will be passed to `initialize-instance`.

  The way this works is that the returned constructor procedure accepts additional arguments after the specified number of slot values, and passes these extra arguments to `initialize-instance`. When n-init-args is not supplied or is `#t`, any number of extra arguments are accepted and passed along. When n-init-args is an exact non-negative integer, exactly that number of extra arguments must be supplied when the constructor is called. Finally, if n-init-args is the symbol `no-initialize-instance`, then the constructor accepts no extra arguments and does not call `initialize-instance` at all; this is desirable when `initialize-instance` is not needed, because it makes the constructor significantly faster.

  For notational convenience, n-init-args may take two other forms. First, it may be a list of symbols, which is equivalent to the integer that is the length of the list. Second, it may be the symbol `no-init`, which is an abbreviation for `no-initialize-instance`.

  Note that the default method on `initialize-instance` accepts no extra arguments and does nothing.

  Examples of `instance-constructor`:

      (define-class <simple-reference> (<reference>)
        (from accessor reference-from)
        (to accessor reference-to)
        (cx accessor reference-cx)
        (cy accessor reference-cy))

      (define make-simple-reference
        (instance-constructor <simple-reference>
                              '(from to cx cy)
                              'no-init))

      (define-class <simple-wirenet> (<wirenet>)
        (cell accessor wirenet-cell)
        (wires accessor wirenet-wires
               modifier set-wirenet-wires!
               initial-value '()))

      (define make-simple-wirenet
        (instance-constructor <simple-wirenet> '(cell)))

Procedure: instance? object
  Returns `#t` if object is an instance, otherwise returns `#f`.

Procedure: instance-class instance
  Returns the class of instance. This is faster than `object-class`, but it works only for instances, and not for other objects.

Procedure: instance-of? object specializer
  Returns `#t` if object is a general instance of specializer, otherwise returns `#f`. This is equivalent to

      (subclass? (object-class object) specializer)

Procedure: instance-predicate specializer
  Returns a predicate procedure for specializer. The returned procedure accepts one argument and returns `#t` if the argument is an instance of specializer and `#f` otherwise.

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This document was generated by Chris Hanson on March, 7 2002 using texi2html