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Concept-Controlled Polymorphism

  • Conference paper
Generative Programming and Component Engineering (GPCE 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2830))

Abstract

Concepts – sets of abstractions related by common requirements – have a central role in generic programming. This paper proposes a general framework for using concepts to control polymorphism in different ways. First, concepts can be used to constrain parametric polymorphism, as exemplified by type classes in Haskell. Second, concepts can be used to provide fine-grained control of function and operator overloading. Finally, generic functions can be overloaded (specialized) based on concepts, rather than simply on types. We describe a C++ implementation of a new mechanism, which we call enable_if, and its role in concept-controlled polymorphism.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Open Systems Laboratory, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, 47405, USA

    Jaakko Järvi, Jeremiah Willcock & Andrew Lumsdaine

Authors
  1. Jaakko Järvi
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  2. Jeremiah Willcock
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  3. Andrew Lumsdaine
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Carnegie Mellon University,  

    Frank Pfenning

  2. Department of Computer and Information Science, University of Oregon, OR 97403-1202, Eugene, USA

    Yannis Smaragdakis

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Järvi, J., Willcock, J., Lumsdaine, A. (2003). Concept-Controlled Polymorphism. In: Pfenning, F., Smaragdakis, Y. (eds) Generative Programming and Component Engineering. GPCE 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2830. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39815-8_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-39815-8_14

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-20102-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-39815-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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