The Cecil Language: Specification and Rationale, Version 2.1

Abstract

1 - Introduction

1.1 - Design Goals and Major Features

1.2 - Overview

2 - Dynamically-Typed Core

2.1 - Objects and Inheritance

2.1.1 - Inheritance

2.1.2 - Object Instantiation

2.1.3 - Extension Declarations

2.1.4 - Predefined Objects

2.1.5 - Closures

2.2 - Methods

2.2.1 - Argument Specializers and Multi-Methods

2.2.2 - Method Bodies

2.2.3 - Primitive Methods

2.3 - Fields

2.3.1 - Read-Only vs. Mutable Fields

2.3.2 - Fields and Methods

2.3.3 - Copy-Down vs. Shared Fields

2.3.4 - Field Initialization

2.4 - Predicate Objects

2.4.1 - Predicate Objects and Inheritance

2.4.2 - Predicate Objects and Fields

2.5 - Statements and Expressions

2.5.1 - Declaration Blocks

2.5.2 - Variable Declarations

2.5.3 - Variable References

2.5.4 - Assignment Statements

2.5.5 - Literals

2.5.6 - Message Sends

2.5.7 - Object Constructors

2.5.8 - Vector Constructors

2.5.9 - Closures

2.5.10 - Parenthetical Subexpressions

2.6 - Precedence Declarations

2.6.1 - Previous Approaches

2.6.2 - Precedence and Associativity Declarations in Cecil

2.7 - Method Lookup

2.7.1 - Philosophy

2.7.2 - Semantics

2.7.3 - Examples

2.7.4 - Strengths and Limitations

2.7.5 - Multiple Inheritance of Fields

2.7.6 - Cyclic Inheritance

2.7.7 - Method Lookup and Lexical Scoping

2.7.8 - Method Invocation

2.8 - Resends

2.9 - Files and Include Declarations

2.10 - Pragmas

3 - Static Types

3.1 - Goals

3.2 - Types and Signatures

3.3 - Type and Signature Declarations

3.3.1 - Type Declarations

3.3.2 - Representation and Object Declarations

3.3.3 - Type and Object Extension Declarations

3.3.4 - Signature Declarations

3.3.5 - Implementation and Method Declarations

3.3.6 - Field Implementation Declarations

3.3.7 - Other Type Declarations

3.3.8 - Discussion

3.4 - Special Types and Type Constructors

3.4.1 - Named Types

3.4.2 - Closure Types

3.4.3 - Least-Upper-Bound Types

3.4.4 - Greatest-Lower-Bound Types

3.5 - Object Role Annotations

3.6 - Type Checking Messages

3.6.1 - Checking Messages Against Signatures

3.6.2 - Checking Signatures Against Method Implementations

3.6.3 - Comparison with Other Type Systems

3.6.4 - Type Checking Inherited Methods

3.7 - Type Checking Expressions, Statements, and Declarations

3.8 - Type Checking Subtyping Declarations

3.9 - Type Checking Predicate Objects

3.10 - Mixed Statically- and Dynamically-Typed Code

4 - Parameterization and Parametric Polymorphism

4.1 - Explicit Parameterization

4.1.1 - Parameterized Declarations and Formal Type Parameters

4.1.2 - Instantiating Parameterized Declarations

4.1.3 - Parameterized Objects and Types

4.1.4 - Method Lookup

4.1.5 - Type Checking Instantiations

4.2 - Implicit Parameterization

4.3 - Matching Against Type Patterns

4.3.1 - Method Formal Type Patterns

4.3.2 - Upper Bound Type Patterns

4.3.3 - The Matching Algorithm

4.3.4 - Static vs. Dynamic Matching

4.3.5 - Constraints on Supertype Graphs for Matching

4.3.6 - Matching and Bounded Formal Type Parameters

4.4 - Implicit Type Parameters in Extension Declarations

4.5 - Parameterized Objects and Method Lookup

4.6 - Parameterization and Syntactic Sugars

4.7 - F-Bounded Polymorphism

4.7.1 - Motivation

4.7.2 - F-Bounded Polymorphism in Singly-Dispatched Languages

4.7.3 - F-Bounded Polymorphism in Cecil

4.7.4 - F-Bounded Polymorphism among Multiple Types

5 - Modules

6 - Related Work

7 - Conclusion

Acknowledgments

References

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