[racket] Functional struct update with subtypes

Ya, vanilla structs can't do that.

It is possible for there to be no syntactic connection between a
parent's definition (and uses of it) and an arbitrary child
definition, so we can't even use gross expand phase state to
communicate.

I'm a big believer in prototype object systems as a foundation of
functional OO like this.

Here's a pretty good implementation I made a while back:

https://github.com/jeapostrophe/exp/blob/master/foo/test.rkt

Jay


2011/5/11 David Van Horn <dvanhorn at ccs.neu.edu>:
> On 5/11/11 4:03 PM, Nadeem Abdul Hamid wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, May 11, 2011 at 3:45 PM, David Van Horn<dvanhorn at ccs.neu.edu>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Is there a good way to do a functional struct updates with subtypes of a
>>> structure?
>>
>> There was some discussion about it a while ago in reference to
>> struct-copy. The documentation has been updated with some useful
>> examples, including usage of the new #parent parameter:
>> http://docs.racket-lang.org/reference/struct-copy.html
>
> I actually fat-fingered sending that email, so let me give some more
> context.  The #:parent parameter doesn't really help me.
>
> Here are some struct definitions and a function, based on Land of Lisp:
>
> (struct monster (id [hit #:mutable]) #:transparent)
> (struct orc monster (club) #:transparent)
> (struct hydra monster () #:transparent)
> (struct slime monster (sliminess) #:transparent)
> (struct brigand monster () #:transparent)
>
> (define (damage! m n)
>  (set-monster-hit! m (max 0 (- (monster-hit m) n))))
>
> I'd like to write a functional version of damage!, but it looks like I
> can't.  The best I can do is write an ugly, not-really-generic version like
> this:
>
> (define (damage m n)
>  (let ((h (max 0 (- (monster-hit m) n))))
>    (cond [(orc? m) (struct-copy orc m [hit #:parent monster h])]
>          [(hydra? m) (struct-copy hydra m [hit #:parent monster h])]
>          [(slime? m) (struct-copy slime m [hit #:parent monster h])]
>          [(brigand? m) (struct-copy brigand m [hit #:parent monster h])])))
>
> David
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-- 
Jay McCarthy <jay at cs.byu.edu>
Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University
http://faculty.cs.byu.edu/~jay

"The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93