NDLI: Practical predicate dispatch

Content Provider	ACM Digital Library
Author	Millstein, Todd
Abstract	Predicate dispatch is an object-oriented (OO) language mechanism for determining the method implementation to be invoked upon a message send. With predicate dispatch, each method implementation includes a predicate guard specifying the conditions under which the method should be invoked, and logical implication of predicates determines the method overriding relation. Predicate dispatch naturally unifies and generalizes several common forms of dynamic dispatch, including traditional OO dispatch, multimethod dispatch, and functional-style pattern matching. Unfortunately, prior languages supporting predicate dispatch have had several deficiencies that limit its utility in practice. We introduce JPred, a backward-compatible extension to Java supporting predicate dispatch. While prior languages with predicate dispatch have been extensions to toy or non-mainstream languages, we show how predicate dispatch can be naturally added to a traditional OO language. While prior languages with predicate dispatch have required the whole program to be available for type-checking and compilation, JPred retains Java's modular typechecking and compilation strategies. While prior languages with predicate dispatch have included special-purpose algorithms for reasoning about predicates, JPred employs general-purpose, off-the-shelf decision procedures. As a result, JPred's type system is more flexible, allowing several useful programming idioms that are spuriously rejected by those other languages. After describing the JPred language and type system, we present a case study illustrating the utility of JPred in a real-world application, including its use in the detection of several errors.
Starting Page	345
Ending Page	364
Page Count	20
File Format	PDF
ISSN	03621340 15581160
DOI	10.1145/1035292.1029006
Journal	ACM SIGPLAN Notices (SIGP)
Volume Number	39
Issue Number	10
Language	English
Publisher	Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
Publisher Date	1983-05-01
Publisher Place	New York
Access Restriction	One Nation One Subscription (ONOS)
Subject Keyword	Predicate dispatch Modular typechecking Dynamic dispatch
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design Software

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