An Open and Shut Typecase (Extended Version)
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Ad-hoc polymorphism is a compelling addition to typed programming languages. There are two different forms of ad-hoc polymorphism. With the nominal form, the execution of an operation is determined solely by the name of the type argument, whereas with the structural form, operations are defined by case analysis on the structure of types. The two forms differ in the way that they treat user-defined types. Operations defined by the nominal approach are considered "open"—the programmer can add cases for new types without modifying existing code. The operations must be extended however with specialized code for the new types, and it may be tedious and even difficult to add extensions that apply to a potentially large universe of user-defined types. Structurally defined operations apply to new types by treating them as equal to their underlying definitions, so no new cases for new types are necessary. However this form is considered "closed" to extension, as the behaviour of the operations cannot be differentiated for the new types. This form destroys the distinctions that user-defined types are designed to express. Both approaches have their benefits, so it is important to provide both capabilities in a single language that is expressive enough to decouple the "openness" issue from the way that user-defined types are treated. We present such a language that supports both forms of ad-hoc polymorphism.
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University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MS-CIS-04-26.