Constrained kinds

Abstract

Modern object-oriented languages such as X10 require a rich framework for types capable of expressing both value-dependency and genericity, and supporting pluggable, domain-specific extensions. In earlier work, we presented a framework for constrained types in object-oriented languages, parametrized by an underlying constraint system. Types are viewed as formulas C{c} where C is the name of a class or an interface and c is a constraint on the immutable instance state (the properties) of C. Constraint systems are a very expressive framework for partial information. Many (value-)dependent type systems for object-oriented languages can be viewed as constrained types.