initialize-instance (Standard Generic Function)

Syntax:

Method Signatures:

initialize-instance (instance standard-object) &rest initargs

Arguments and Values:

instance—an object.

initargs—a defaulted initialization argument list.

Description:

Called by make-instance to initialize a newly created instance. The generic function is called with the new instance and the defaulted initialization argument list.

The system-supplied primary method on initialize-instance initializes the slots of the instance with values according to the initargs and the :initform forms of the slots. It does this by calling the generic function shared-initialize with the following arguments: the instance, t (this indicates that all slots for which no initialization arguments are provided should be initialized according to their :initform forms), and the initargs.

Programmers can define methods for initialize-instance to specify actions to be taken when an instance is initialized. If only after methods are defined, they will be run after the system-supplied primary method for initialization and therefore will not interfere with the default behavior of initialize-instance.

See Also:

shared-initialize (Standard Generic Function), make-instance, slot-boundp, slot-makunbound, Section 7.1 (Object Creation and Initialization), Section 7.1.4 (Rules for Initialization Arguments), Section 7.1.2 (Declaring the Validity of Initialization Arguments)