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Semantic Casts: Contracts and Structural Subtyping in a Nominal World

  • Conference paper
ECOOP 2004 – Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3086))

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Abstract

Nominal subtyping forces programmers to explicitly state all of the subtyping relationships in the program. This limits component reuse, because programmers cannot anticipate all of the contexts in which a particular class might be used. In contrast, structural subtyping implicitly allows any type with appropriate structure to be used in a given context. Languagues with contracts exacerbate the problem. Since contracts are typically expressed as refinements of types, contracts in nominally typed languages introduce additional obstacles to reuse.

To overcome this problem we show how to extend a nominally typed language with semantic casts that introduce a limited form of structural subtyping. The new language must dynamically monitor contracts, as new subtyping relationships are exploited via semantic casts. In addition, it must also track the casts to properly assign blame in case interface contract are violated.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

    Robert Bruce Findler

  2. University of Utah Salt, Lake City, UT, USA

    Matthew Flatt

  3. Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA

    Matthias Felleisen

Authors
  1. Robert Bruce Findler
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  2. Matthew Flatt
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  3. Matthias Felleisen
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. EPFL, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Martin Odersky

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Findler, R.B., Flatt, M., Felleisen, M. (2004). Semantic Casts: Contracts and Structural Subtyping in a Nominal World. In: Odersky, M. (eds) ECOOP 2004 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3086. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24851-4_17

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24851-4_17

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-22159-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24851-4

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