A. Ciaffaglione, P. Di Gianantonio, F. Honsell, and
L. Liquori
Foundations for dynamic object
re-classification
Technical Report 03/2003, Dipartimento di Matematica e Infomatica,
Universita' di Udine, Italy, 2003
We investigate, in the context of functional prototype-based
languages, objects which might extend themselves upon
receiving a message. The possibility for an object of extending its
own ``self'', referred to by Cardelli as a self-inflicted
operation, is novel in the context of typed object-based languages. We
present a sound type system for this calculus which guarantees that
evaluating a well-typed expression will never yield a
message-not-found run-time error. The resulting calculus appears to
be also a good starting point for a rigorous mathematical analysis of
class-based languages.
Our contribute can be viewed as a theoretical and sound foundation for
dynamic object re-classification underpinned on
functional programming paradigm. Re-classification changes at
run-time the class membership of an object while retaining its
identity. An imperative approach to re-classification, suggesting
language features, has been undertaken through the language
Fickle.
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