Module Constructs for Object-Oriented and Functional Programming Languages

Object-oriented languages offer mechanisms to help structure large programs. However, the semantics of these constructs are often not very precisely defined. For example, the use of inheritance as a substitute for subtype polymorphism in many object-oriented languages either leads to an unsound or a too inflexible type system. In addition, ideas from module constructs of functional languages could increase the expressiveness of object-oriented languages and vice versa. We propose to design module constructs incorporating the best features found among module constructs of object-oriented languages and of functional languages. In particular, we plan to incorporate parametric polymorphism, subtype polymorphism, overloading, type abstraction, and compile-time type inference in a semantically clean manner. We try to achieve this with a minimumamount of declarations required from the programmer and a minimum amount of run-time type information. 1 Introduction Module constructs are generally..