A good approach to that specific issue would be for us to provide hooks into srand, allowing other packages to register callbacks with the same signature. As to the original question, while you can pull individual methods out of generic functions, you can't call them, so there's no way to do this currently.
On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 5:35 PM, 'Deniz Yuret' via julia-users < julia-users@googlegroups.com> wrote: > Thanks! I guess my rand() example was not a good example. The actual use > case was trying to get srand to set the seed for the gpu as well as the > cpu. I thought if I could override the srand function (so the user does > not need to remember a new name), and have it call the original srand as > well as the gpu srand that would be a good solution. As things stand, (1) > I can use a different name, (2) I can create an srand specific to my module > following Matt's suggestion (do I then export this or have people call > MyModule.srand()?), (3) I can look at what the original srand does and copy > it into the new function. > > However more generally, if I understand correctly, once a function in a > module is imported and redefined, there is no way to access the original > definition. Please correct me if I am wrong. > > best, > deniz > > > On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 2:17 PM Stefan Karpinski <ste...@karpinski.org> > wrote: > >> Overwriting methods in Base is a bad idea. This will affect all usages of >> the function, not just the ones in your module. You can have your own >> function called rand() instead. >> >> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 3:43 PM, Matt Bauman <mbau...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> Note the warning message you get upon trying to define Base.rand(): >>> Warning: Method definition rand() in module Random at random.jl:195 >>> overwritten in module Main at none:1 >>> >>> You're not shadowing rand; you're totally overwriting one of its main >>> methods. I agree with Tom that you should probably use a different name, >>> but if you really wanted to, you could actually shadow the name: >>> >>> julia> rand() = Base.rand() + 1 # Note that this will only work if you >>> haven't used Base.rand in your module or session yet. >>> rand (generic function with 1 method) >>> >>> julia> rand() >>> 1.9306557841053391 >>> >>> julia> Base.rand() >>> 0.8691479006333791 >>> >>> >>> On Tuesday, June 30, 2015 at 3:07:30 PM UTC-4, Deniz Yuret wrote: >>> >>>> Say we import and redefine a function from Base. Is it possible to >>>> access the form of the function before the redefinition? >>>> >>>> Here is an example of what I am trying to do (which doesn't work): >>>> >>>> rand_orig = rand >>>> Base.rand()=(rand_orig() + 1) >>>> >>>> >>
