research-article

Type safe dynamic object delegation in class-based languages

Authors:

Lorenzo Bettini,

Viviana BonoAuthors Info & Claims

PPPJ '08: Proceedings of the 6th international symposium on Principles and practice of programming in Java

Pages 171 - 180

https://doi.org/10.1145/1411732.1411756

Published: 09 September 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Class inheritance and method overriding, as provided by standard class-based languages, are not flexible enough to represent the dynamic behavior of objects; with this respect, object composition and delegation are often advocated as a more flexible alternative to class inheritance since they act at run-time, thus permitting the behavior of objects to be specialized dynamically. In this paper we present Incomplete Featherweight Java (IFJ), an extension of Featherweight Java with incomplete objects, i.e., objects that require some missing methods which can be provided at run-time by composition with another (complete) object. The mechanism for method invocation is based on delegation and it is disciplined by static typing, therefore the language enjoys type safety (which implies no "message-not-understood" run-time errors) and avoids possible accidental overrides due to method clashes.

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Cited By

Damiani FPadovani LSchaefer ISeidl C(2018)A core calculus for dynamic delta-oriented programmingActa Informatica10.1007/s00236-017-0293-655:4(269-307)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00236-017-0293-6
Bettini LCapecchi SDamiani FBanerjee A(2009)A mechanism for flexible dynamic trait replacementProceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs10.1145/1557898.1557907(1-7)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1557898.1557907
Bettini LBono VTurin E(2009)I-JavaProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Software Composition10.1007/978-3-642-02655-3_4(27-44)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-02655-3_4

Index Terms

Type safe dynamic object delegation in class-based languages
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features

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cover image ACM Conferences

PPPJ '08: Proceedings of the 6th international symposium on Principles and practice of programming in Java

September 2008

198 pages

ISBN:9781605582238

DOI:10.1145/1411732

Conference Chairs:
Luis Veiga
Universidade Técnica de Lisboa, Portugal
,
Vasco Amaral
Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

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Published: 09 September 2008

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PPPJ08: Principles and Practice of Prgramming in Java 2008

September 9 - 11, 2008

Modena, Italy

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Overall Acceptance Rate 29 of 58 submissions, 50%

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Cited By

Damiani FPadovani LSchaefer ISeidl C(2018)A core calculus for dynamic delta-oriented programmingActa Informatica10.1007/s00236-017-0293-655:4(269-307)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s00236-017-0293-6
Bettini LCapecchi SDamiani FBanerjee A(2009)A mechanism for flexible dynamic trait replacementProceedings of the 11th International Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs10.1145/1557898.1557907(1-7)Online publication date: 6-Jul-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1557898.1557907
Bettini LBono VTurin E(2009)I-JavaProceedings of the 8th International Conference on Software Composition10.1007/978-3-642-02655-3_4(27-44)Online publication date: 30-Jun-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-642-02655-3_4

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