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Subtyping is not a good “match” for object-oriented languages

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ECOOP'97 — Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 1997)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1241))

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Abstract

We present the design and rationale of a new statically-typed object-oriented language, LOOM. LOOM, retains most of the features of the earlier language PolyTOIL. However the subtyping relation is dropped from LOOM in favor of the matching relation. “Hash types”, which are denned in terms of matching, are introduced to provide some of the benefits of subtyping. These types can be used to provide support for heterogeneous data stuctures in LOOM. LOOM. is considerably simpler than PolyTOIL, yet is just as expressive. The type system for the language is decidable and provably type safe. The addition of modules to the language provides better control over information hiding and allows the provision of access like that of C++'s friends.

Bruce and Petersen's research was partially supported by NSF grant CCR-9424123. Fiech's research was partially supported by NSERC grant OGP0170497.

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Author information

Author notes

  1. Leaf Petersen

    Present address: School of Computer Science, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA

    Kim B. Bruce & Leaf Petersen

  2. Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada

    Adrian Fiech

Authors
  1. Kim B. Bruce
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  2. Leaf Petersen
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  3. Adrian Fiech
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Mehmet Akşit Satoshi Matsuoka

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© 1997 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Bruce, K.B., Petersen, L., Fiech, A. (1997). Subtyping is not a good “match” for object-oriented languages. In: Akşit, M., Matsuoka, S. (eds) ECOOP'97 — Object-Oriented Programming. ECOOP 1997. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1241. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053376

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0053376

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-63089-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69127-3

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