cl-mw-equiv

Common Lisp comes with quite some functions to compare objects for equality, yet none is applicable in every situation and in general this is hard, as equality of objects depends on the semantics of operations on them. As consequence, users find themselves regularly in a situation where they have to roll their own specialized equality test.

This module provides one of many possible equivalence relations between standard Common Lisp objects. However, it can be extended for new objects through a simple CLOS protocol. The rules when two objects are considered equivalent distinguish between mutating and frozen objects. A frozen object is promised not to be mutated in the future in a way that operations on it can notice the difference.

We have chosen to compare mutating objects only for identity (pointer equality), to avoid various problems. Equivalence for frozen objects on the other hand is established by recursing on the objects' constituent parts and checking their equivalence. Hence, two objects are equivalent under the OBJECT= relation, if they are either identical, or if they are frozen and structurally equivalent, i.e. their constituents are point-wise equivalent.

Since many objects are potentially mutable, but are not necessarily mutated from a certain point in their life time on, it is possible to promise to the equivalence relation that they remain frozen for the rest of their life time, thus enabling coarser equivalence than the often too fine-grained pointer equality.