Toward Foundations of Concurrent Object‐Oriented Programming‐Types and Language Design

Abstract

A number of attempts have been made to obtain type systems for object‐oriented programming. The view that lies common is “object‐oriented programming = λ‐calculus + record.” Based on an analogous view “concurrent object‐oriented programming = concurrent calculus + record,” we aim to establish a foundation for concurrent object‐oriented programming. We choose our own Higher‐Order ACL as a basic concurrent calculus, and show that a concurrent object‐oriented language can be easily encoded in the Higher‐Order ACL extended with record operations. Since Higher‐Order ACL has a strong type system with a polymorphic type Inference mechanism, programs of the concurrent object‐oriented language can be automatically type‐checked by the encoding in Higher‐Order ACL. Our approach can give clear accounts for various important mechanisms such as inheritance, method overriding and access control for methods within a simple framework.