Semantic Subtyping for Objects and Classes

Ornela Dardha (1, 2, 3) , Daniele Gorla (4) , Daniele Varacca (5)

1 FOCUS - Foundations of Component-based Ubiquitous Systems
2 DISI - Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Informazione [Bologna]
3 DISI - Department of Computer Science and Engineering [Bologna]
4 DIS - Dipartimento di Informatica e Sistemistica "Antonio Ruberti"
5 PPS - Preuves, Programmes et Systèmes

We propose an integration of structural subtyping with boolean connectives and semantic subtyping to define a Java-like programming language that exploits the benefits of both techniques. Semantic subtyping is an approach to defining subtyping relation based on set-theoretic models, rather than syntactic rules. On the one hand, this approach involves some non trivial mathematical machinery in the background. On the other hand, final users of the language need not know this machinery and the resulting subtyping relation is very powerful and intuitive. While semantic subtyping is naturally linked to the structural one, we show how the framework can also accommodate the nominal subtyping. Several examples show the expressivity and the practical advantages of our proposal.

Domaines: Informatique

Ornela Dardha, Daniele Gorla, Daniele Varacca. Semantic Subtyping for Objects and Classes. 15th International Conference on Formal Methods for Open Object-Based Distributed Systems (FMOOODS) / 33th International Conference on Formal Techniques for Networked and Distributed Systems (FORTE), Jun 2013, Firenze, Italy. pp.66-82, ⟨10.1007/978-3-642-38592-6_6⟩. ⟨hal-00909299⟩