In the previous section, we saw how to design systems in which data
objects can be represented in more than one way. The key idea is to
link the code that specifies the data operations to the several
representations by means of generic interface procedures. Now we will
see how to use this same idea not only to define operations that are
generic over different representations but also to define operations
that are generic over different kinds of arguments. We have already
seen several different packages of arithmetic operations: the primitive
arithmetic (+, -, *, /) built into our
language, the rational-number arithmetic (add-rat,
sub-rat, mul-rat, div-rat) of
section ![[*]](../image/cross_ref_motif.gif)
, and the complex-number arithmetic that we
implemented in section . We will now use
data-directed techniques to construct a package of arithmetic
operations that incorporates all the arithmetic packages we have already
constructed.
Figure shows the structure of the system we
shall build. Notice the
abstraction barriers. From the perspective
of someone using ``numbers,'' there is a single procedure add
that operates on whatever numbers are supplied. Add is part of
a generic interface that allows the separate ordinary-arithmetic,
rational-arithmetic, and complex-arithmetic packages to be accessed
uniformly by programs that use numbers. Any individual arithmetic
package (such as the complex package) may itself be accessed through
generic procedures (such as add-complex) that combine packages
designed for different representations (such as rectangular and
polar). Moreover, the structure of the system is additive, so
that one can design the individual arithmetic packages separately and
combine them to produce a generic arithmetic system.
