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Integrating constraints with an object-oriented language

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ECOOP ’92 European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 1992)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 615))

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Abstract

Constraints are declarative statements of relations among elements of the language's computational domain, e.g., integers, booleans, strings, and other objects. Orthogonally, the tools of object-oriented programming, including encapsulation, inheritance, and dynamic message binding, provide important mechanisms for extending a language's domain. Although the integration of constraints and objects seems obvious and natural, one basic obstacle stands in the way: objects provide a new, larger, computational domain, which the language's embedded constraint solver must accommodate. In this paper we list some goals and non-goals for an integration of constraints and object oriented language features, outline previous approaches to this integration, and describe the scheme we use in Kaleidoscope'91, our object-oriented constraint imperative programming language. Kaleidoscope'91 uses a class-based object model, multi-methods, and constraint constructors to integrate cleanly the encapsulation and abstraction of a state-of-the-art object-oriented language with the declarative aspects of constraints.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055, V8W 3P6, Victoria, B.C., Canada

    Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson

  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, FR-35, University of Washington, 98195, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Alan Borning

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  1. Bjorn N. Freeman-Benson
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  2. Alan Borning
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Ole Lehrmann Madsen

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© 1992 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Freeman-Benson, B.N., Borning, A. (1992). Integrating constraints with an object-oriented language. In: Madsen, O.L. (eds) ECOOP ’92 European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 615. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053042

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053042

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55668-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47268-1

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