Interpretation of objects and object types

Abstract

We present an interpretation of typed object-oriented concepts in terms of well-understood, purely procedural concepts. More precisely, we give a compositional subtype-preserving translation of a basic object calculus supporting method invocation, functional method update, and subtyping, into the polymorphic λ-calculus with recursive types and subtyping. The translation techniques apply also to an imperative version of the object calculus which includes inplace method update and object cloning. Finally, the translation easily extends to 'Self types' and other interesting object-oriented constructs.