Subtyping is not a good "Match" for object-oriented languages (1997)
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BibTeX
@MISC{Bruce97subtypingis,
author = {Kim B. Bruce and Leaf Petersen and Adrian Fiech},
title = {Subtyping is not a good "Match" for object-oriented languages},
year = {1997}
}
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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 defined 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. 1 Introduction Most statically-typed object-oriented programming languages, including C++ [ES90], Java [AG96], Object Pascal [Tes85], and Modula 3 [CDG + 88], suffer from very rigid type systems which can block the easy expression of programmers ' ideas,...
