I'd like to use names such as elt, nth and mapcar with a new data structure that I am prototyping, but these names designate ordinary functions and so, I think, would need to be redefined as generic functions.
Presumably it's bad form to redefine these names?
Is there a way to tell defgeneric not to generate a program error and to go ahead and replace the function binding?
Is there a good reason for these not being generic functions or is just historic?
What's the considered wisdom and best practice here please?
If you are using SBCL or ABCL, and aren't concerned with ANSI compliance, you could investigate Extensible Sequences:
http://www.sbcl.org/manual/#Extensible-Sequences
http://www.doc.gold.ac.uk/~mas01cr/papers/ilc2007/sequences-20070301.pdf
...you can't redefine functions in the COMMON-LISP package, but you could create a new package and shadow the imports of the functions you want to redefine.
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