Translation Correctness for First-Order Object-Oriented Pattern Matching

• Publication date: 2007

Pattern matching makes ML programs more concise and readable, and these qualities are also sought in object-oriented settings. However, objects and classes come with open class hierarchies, extensibility requirements and the need for data abstraction, which all conflict with matching on concrete data types. Extractor-based pattern matching has been proposed to address this conflict. Extractors are user-defined methods that perform the task of value discrimination and deconstruction during pattern matching. In this paper, we give the first formalization of extractor-based matching, using a first-order object-oriented calculus. We give a direct operational semantics and prove it sound. We then present an optimizing translation to a target language without matching, and prove a correctness result stating that an expression is equivalent to its translation.

Keywords: Pattern Matching ; Data Abstraction ; Object-Oriented Programming ; Functional Programming ; Programming Languages and Constructs ; Operational Semantics

Reference

• LAMP-REPORT-2007-003
• View record in Web of Science

Record created on 2007-06-14, modified on 2012-03-21