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Modular Statically Typed Multimethods

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ECOOP’ 99 — Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 1999)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1628))

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Abstract

Multimethods offer several well-known advantages over the single dispatching of conventional object-oriented languages, including a simple solution to the ”binary method“ problem, cleaner implementations of the “visitor,” “strategy,” and similar design patterns, and a form of “open objects.” However, previous work on statically typed multimethods whose arguments are treated symmetrically has required the whole program to be available in order to perform typechecking. We describe Dubious, a simple core language including first-class generic functions with symmetric multimethods, a classless object model, and modules that can be separately typechecked. We identify two sets of restrictions that ensure modular type safety for Dubious as well as an interesting intermediate point between these two.We have proved each of these modular type systems sound.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, USA

    Todd Millstein & Craig Chambers

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  1. Todd Millstein
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  2. Craig Chambers
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Department, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, CH-1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Rachid Guerraoui

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Millstein, T., Chambers, C. (1999). Modular Statically Typed Multimethods. In: Guerraoui, R. (eds) ECOOP’ 99 — Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1628. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48743-3_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48743-3_13

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66156-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48743-2

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