Research on "Formal Methods in Computing"

An effective translation of Fickle into Java

Work partially supported by MURST Cofin '99 TOSCA Project, CNR-GNSAGA, and the EPSRC (Grant Ref: GR/L 76709).

ABSTRACT. We present a translation from Fickle (a Java-like language allowing dynamic object re-classification, 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-classification could be fully compatible with the existing Java environment.

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BIBTEX.

@inproceedings{AnconaAndersonDamianiDrossopoulouGianniniZucca:ICTCS-01,
   author    = {D. Ancona and C. Anderson and F. Damiani and
                S. Drossopoulou and P. Giannini and E. Zucca},
   title     = {An effective translation of Fickle into Java 
                (extended abstract)},
   booktitle = {ICTCS'01},
   year      = {2001},
   publisher = {Springer},
   pages     = {215-234},
   series    = {LNCS 2202}
}