15-312 Foundations of Programming Languages
Lectures 20-21: Objects

In this lecture we examine the design goals and technical properties of object-oriented languages. Rather than study languages like Java, which give up some of the desirable features of functional languages, we will look at how objects can be added naturally to already powerful functional languages like ML.

The EML language adds objects to ML by making datatypes and functions hierarchically extensible. Thus, new constructors can be added to a datatype after the datatype is initially defined, and cases can be added to functions over that datatype to handle the new constructors after the functions are initially defined. Instead of a flat set of datatype constructors, the constructors are organized into a hierarchy of classes, so that code written for a superclass can be reused when it is applied to instances of the subclass. Classes in EML define their own types, making it possible to define functions that operate on a subset of the classes in a hierarchy.

We define the operational semantics of EML by giving the rules that are new with respect to MinML. We also discuss typechecking algorithms for EML, beginning with a global algorithm, and showing how the algorithm can be made modular.

• Lecture notes: 20-objects.pdf
• Optional additional reading: A paper describing the EML language
• Code: an EML implementation is available from the software page
• Previous lecture: Type Inference
• Next lecture: Inheritance and Subtyping

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Frank Pfenning