= simplegeneric =

== Description ==

Simple generic functions (similar to Python's own len(), pickle.dump(), etc.)

The simplegeneric module lets you define simple single-dispatch generic
functions, akin to Python's built-in generic functions like len()
iter() and so on. However, instead of using specially-named methods,
these generic functions use simple lookup tables, akin to those used by
e.g. pickle.dump() and other generic functions found in the Python
standard library.

As you can see from the above examples, generic functions are actually
quite common in Python already, but there is no standard way to create
simple ones. This library attempts to fill that gap, as generic
functions are an excellent alternative to the Visitor pattern, as well
as being a great substitute for most common uses of adaptation.

This library tries to be the simplest possible implementation of
generic functions, and it therefore eschews the use of multiple or
predicate dispatch, as well as avoiding speedup techniques such as C
dispatching or code generation. But it has absolutely no dependencies,
other than Python 2.4, and the implementation is just a single Python
module of less than 100 lines.
