overloaded function handles

[John W. Eaton]

On 27-Jul-2009, John Swensen wrote:

| I think patent number 6,857,118 is the more applicable one: "Function  
| values in computer programming languages having dynamic types and  
| overloading."

Yes, sorry.  I pasted the wrong number in.

|  That being said, I find it ridiculous that the ability  
| to overload a function by string name is actually patentable.  There  
| has got to be gobs of languages that did the same thing before this  
| patent was issued, right?

Yes,  I agree that the claims for using '@' and 'feval' seem to go too
far, and I don't see how they could hold up, but they could.

However, if I understand it correctly, that's not the major point of
this patent.  Instead, the point is that you can create a function
handle in one context, and then use that handle in another context to
call a function, and the dispatch will be determined by the arguments
given and information about which functions are available at the point
where the funtion handle was created, not where it is used.  Do you
know of prior art for that?  Is there a way to implement this feature
in a way that does not use the method described in the patent?  The
language of claim 1 seems fairly broad.

jwe