Matching Objects with Patterns

• Publication date: 2006

Data in object-oriented programming is organized in a hierarchy of classes. The problem of *object-oriented pattern matching* is how to explore this hierarchy from the outside. This usually involves classifying objects by their run-time type, accessing their members, or determining some other characteristic of a group of objects. In this paper we compare six different pattern matching techniques: object-oriented decomposition, visitors, type-tests/type-casts, typecase, case classes, and extractors. The techniques are compared on nine criteria related to conciseness, maintainability and performance. The paper introduces case classes and extractors as two new pattern-matching methods and shows that their combination works well for all of the established criteria.

Keywords: object-oriented programming ; pattern matching ; language design ; type systems ; generalized algebraic data types

Reference

• LAMP-REPORT-2006-006
• View record in Web of Science

Record created on 2006-12-22, modified on 2012-03-21