Multi-Methods in a Statically-Typed Programming Language

Mugridge, R.B.; Hamer, J.; Hosking, J.G.

dc.contributor.author	Mugridge, R.B.	en
dc.contributor.author	Hamer, J.	en
dc.contributor.author	Hosking, J.G.	en
dc.date.accessioned	2009-04-08T04:02:46Z	en
dc.date.available	2009-04-08T04:02:46Z	en
dc.date.issued	1991-11	en
dc.identifier.citation	Computer Science Technical Reports 050 (1991)	en
dc.identifier.issn	1173-3500	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/2292/3461	en
dc.description.abstract	Multivariant functions in Kea are a statically-typed form of the multi-methods of CLOS (Keene, 1989) but encapsulation is retained. Multivariants permit fine typing distinctions to be made, allow despatching to be avoided in some cases, and may be used to avoid some restrictions of the contravariance rule. Once multivariant functions are introduced by example, the semantics of the despatch of multivariants are provided, based on the generation of despatching variants. Three issues arise with despatching: redundancy, ambiguity, and exhaustiveness of a (partially-ordered) set of variants with respect to a function call. It is shown that the approach taken here is consistent with separate compilation.	en
dc.publisher	Department of Computer Science, The University of Auckland, New Zealand	en
dc.relation.ispartofseries	Computer Science Technical Reports	en
dc.rights.uri	https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htm	en
dc.source.uri	http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/staff-cgi-bin/mjd/csTRcgi.pl?serial	en
dc.title	Multi-Methods in a Statically-Typed Programming Language	en
dc.type	Technical Report	en
dc.subject.marsden	Fields of Research::280000 Information, Computing and Communication Sciences	en
dc.rights.holder	The author(s)	en