An Effective Translation of
Fickle into Java
(Extended Abstract)
Davide Ancona6, Christopher Anderson7, Ferruccio Damiani8, Sophia Drossopoulou7, Paola Giannini9 and Elena Zucca6
| (6) |
DISI - Università di Genova, France |
| (7) |
Imperial College, London, USA |
| (8) |
Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Torino, France |
| (9) |
DISTA - Università del Piemonte Orientale, France |
Abstract
We present a translation from Fickle (a Java-like language allowing dynamic object re-classi.cation, that is, objects that can change their class at run-time)
into plain Java. The translation is proved to preserve static and dynamic semantics; moreover, it is shown to be effective, in the sense that the translation of a Fickle class does not depend on the implementation of used classes, hence can be done in a separate way, that is, without having their sources, exactly as it happens for Java compilation. The aim is to demonstrate that an
extension of Java supporting dynamic object re-classi.cation could be fully compatible with the existing Java environment.
Partially supported by Murst Co.n’99 — TOSCA Project, CNR-GNSAGA, and the EPSRC (Grant Ref: GR/L 76709).
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