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International Symposium on Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering

GCSE 2000: Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering pp 189–201Cite as

Just When You Thought Your Little Language Was Safe: “Expression Templates” in Java

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2177))

Abstract

Template techniques in C++ allow a modest degree of generative programming: creating specialized code for specialized problems. This use of templates has been controversial; indeed,one of the oft-cited reasons for migrating to Java is that it provides a simpler language,free of complexities such as templates. The essence of generative programming in C++ is not templates — the language feature — but rather the underlying algorithms in the compiler (template instantiation) which unintentionally resemble an optimization called partial evaluation [12,18]. By devising a partial evaluator for Java,we reproduce some of the generative programming aspects of C++ templates,wit hout extending the Java language. The prototype compiler,called Lunar,is capable of doing “expression templates” in Java to optimize numerical array objects.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Extreme Computing Laboratory, Indiana University Computer Science Department, Bloomington Indiana, 47405, USA

    Todd L. Veldhuizen

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  1. Todd L. Veldhuizen
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd West, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1M8, Canada

    Greg Butler

  2. School of Computing, Dept. of Computer Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117543

    Stan Jarzabek

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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Veldhuizen, T.L. (2001). Just When You Thought Your Little Language Was Safe: “Expression Templates” in Java. In: Butler, G., Jarzabek, S. (eds) Generative and Component-Based Software Engineering. GCSE 2000. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2177. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44815-2_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-44815-2_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-42578-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-44815-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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