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The complexity of late-binding in dynamic object-oriented languages

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Principles of Declarative Programming (ALP 1998, PLILP 1998)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1490))

Abstract

We study the algorithmic complexity of supporting late binding in dynamic object-oriented programming (OOP) languages—i.e., languages that allow creation of new class definitions at runtime. We propose an abstraction of the late-binding problem for dynamic OOP languages in terms of operations on dynamic trees, and develop a lower bound of Ω(lg n) per operation (where n is the number of nodes in the tree). This result shows that efficient solutions (i.e., solutions that incur a constant time overhead per operation) of this problem are, in general, not possible. We also propose new data-structures and algorithms for solving the late-binding problem for dynamic OOP languages very efficiently, with a worst-case time complexity of \(O\left( {\sqrt[3]{n}} \right)\) per operation. This result is an improvement over most existing approaches.

This work has been partially supported by NSF grants HRD 93-53271, INT 95-15256, and CCR 96-25358, and by NATO Grant CRG 921318.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory for Logic, Databases, and Advanced Programming Department of Computer Science, New Mexico State University, 88003, Las Cruces, NM, USA

    Enrico Pontelli, Desh Ranjan & Gopal Gupta

Authors
  1. Enrico Pontelli
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  2. Desh Ranjan
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  3. Gopal Gupta
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Catuscia Palamidessi Hugh Glaser Karl Meinke

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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Pontelli, E., Ranjan, D., Gupta, G. (1998). The complexity of late-binding in dynamic object-oriented languages. In: Palamidessi, C., Glaser, H., Meinke, K. (eds) Principles of Declarative Programming. ALP PLILP 1998 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1490. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0056616

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0056616

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-65012-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49766-0

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