Comparison To Other Languages
Generic functions correspond roughly to what Smalltalk calls methods, with the notable exception that, in Smalltalk, the receiver's class is the sole determinant of which body of code is actually called: the types or values of the arguments are irrelevant (single dispatch). In a programming language with multiple dispatch when a generic function is called, method dispatch occurs on the basis of all arguments, not just a single privileged one. New Flavors also provided generic functions, but only single dispatch.
Another, completely separate definition of generic function is a function that uses parametric polymorphism. This is the definition used when working with a language like OCaml. An example of a generic function is
id: a->a let id a = awhich takes an argument of any type and returns something of that same type.
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