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Walkabout Revisited: The Runabout

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ECOOP 2003 – Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2003)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2743))

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Abstract

We present a variation of the visitor pattern which allows programmers to write visitor-like code in a concise way. The Runabout is a library extension that adds a limited form of multi-dispatch to Java. While the Runabout is not as expressive as a general multiple dispatching facility, the Runabout can be significantly faster than existing implementations of multiple dispatch for Java, such as MultiJava. Unlike MultiJava, the Runabout does not require changes to the syntax and the compiler.

In this paper we illustrate how to use the Runabout, detail its implementation and provide benchmarks comparing its performance with other approaches.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. S3 lab, Department of Computer Sciences, Purdue University,  

    Christian Grothoff

Authors
  1. Christian Grothoff
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Microsoft Research,  

    Luca Cardelli

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Grothoff, C. (2003). Walkabout Revisited: The Runabout. In: Cardelli, L. (eds) ECOOP 2003 – Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2743. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45070-2_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-45070-2_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-40531-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45070-2

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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