In most cases, generic words and methods are defined at parse time with GENERIC: (or some other parsing word) and M:.

Sometimes, generic words need to be inspected or defined at run time; words for performing these tasks are found in the generic vocabulary.

The set of generic words is a class which implements the Definition protocol:

generic

generic? ( object -- ? )

New generic words can be defined:

define-generic ( word combination effect -- )

define-simple-generic ( word effect -- )

Methods can be added to existing generic words:

create-method ( class generic -- method )

Method definitions can be looked up:

lookup-method ( class generic -- method )

?lookup-method ( class generic -- method/f )

Finding the most specific method for an object:

effective-method ( generic -- method )

A generic word contains methods; the list of methods specializing on a class can also be obtained:

implementors ( class/classes -- seq )

Low-level word which rebuilds the generic word after methods are added or removed, or the method combination is changed:

make-generic ( word -- )

Low-level method constructor:

<method> ( class generic -- method )

Methods may be pushed on the stack with a literal syntax:

M\

See also
Printing definitions