Protocol
A protocol is a language construct that declares operations or requirements implementable by types, often enabling polymorphic dispatch.
Classic Computer Science Problems in Swift: Essential techniques for practicing programmers
A Swift language construct that specifies requirements for types to adopt without defining a class hierarchy.
- How it is used
- Uses protocols to design a flexible, protocol-first graph framework.
- How deep it goes
- Defines requirements, associated types, extensions, and adoption in a graph framework without developing broader protocol theory.
- Examples
- Demonstrates Edge, Graph, UnweightedEdge, UnweightedGraph, and a city adjacency-list graph.
- What you can do after
- Build flexible Swift graph types by defining protocol requirements and supplying concrete adopting types.
Clojure: The Essential Reference
A Clojure protocol is a named set of method signatures that types can implement and that is represented by a corresponding Java interface.
- How it is used
- Frames protocols as an efficient alternative to cascading instance? checks and a type-oriented choice alongside multimethods.
- How deep it goes
- Explains generated interfaces, dispatch lookup, implementation strategies, extension timing, metadata, and basic performance differences.
- Examples
- Demonstrates protocol inspection, String extension, direct and later implementations, numeric formatting, and polymorphic tree traversal.
- What you can do after
- Build it from scratch with defprotocol, implement methods directly, extend existing types, and inspect supported extensions.
Read how Clojure: The Essential Reference explains protocol →
Related concepts
- protocol-oriented programmingused by · A programming style that emphasizes protocols and composition over class inheritance.
- modulekind of · A module is a distinct, bounded software unit that groups related code or functionality and provides an organizational or interaction boundary within a larger system.
- CollFold protocolincludes · CollFold is a Clojure protocol that allows a collection to provide its own partitioned folding implementation.
- multimethodalternative to · A multimethod is a dispatch mechanism that selects an implementation by applying a dispatch function to multiple arguments, often using their runtime types or values.
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