7.3 Reinitializing an Instance

The generic function reinitialize-instance may be used to change the values of slots according to initialization arguments.

The process of reinitialization changes the values of some slots and performs any user-defined actions. It does not modify the structure of an instance to add or delete slots, and it does not use any :initform forms to initialize slots.

The generic function reinitialize-instance may be called directly. It takes one required argument, the instance. It also takes any number of initialization arguments to be used by methods for reinitialize-instance or for shared-initialize. The arguments after the required instance must form an initialization argument list.

There is a system-supplied primary method for reinitialize-instance whose parameter specializer is the class standard-object. First this method checks the validity of initialization arguments and signals an error if an initialization argument is supplied that is not declared as valid. (For more information, see Section 7.1.2 (Declaring the Validity of Initialization Arguments).) Then it calls the generic function shared-initialize with the following arguments: the instance, nil, and the initialization arguments it received.

7.3.1 Customizing Reinitialization

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

Methods for shared-initialize may be defined to customize class redefinition. For more information, see Section 7.1.5 (Shared-Initialize).