Common Lisp the Language, 2nd Edition
The
function change-class can be used to change the class of an
instance from its current class, 
, to a
different class, 
; it changes the
structure of the instance to conform to the definition of the class
.
Note that changing the class of an instance may cause slots to be added or deleted.
When change-class is invoked on an instance, a two-step updating
process takes place. The first step modifies the structure of
the instance by adding new local slots and discarding local slots that
are not specified in the new version of the instance. The second step
initializes the newly added local slots and performs any other
user-defined actions. These steps are further described in the
following two sections.
