Fisher, Kathleen; Honsell, Furio; Mitchell, John C. A lambda calculus of objects and method specialization. (English) Zbl 0886.03010 Nord. J. Comput. 1, No. 1, 3-37 (1994). Summary: This paper presents an untyped lambda calculus, extended with object primitives that reflect the capabilities of so-called delegation-based object-oriented languages. A type inference system allows static detection of errors, such as ‘message not understood’, while at the same time allowing the type of an inherited method to be specialized to the type of the inheriting object. Type soundness is proved using operational semantics and examples illustrating the expressiveness of the pure calculus are presented. Cited in 5 ReviewsCited in 12 Documents MSC: 03B40 Combinatory logic and lambda calculus 68N01 General topics in the theory of software 68N15 Theory of programming languages 68Q55 Semantics in the theory of computing 03B70 Logic in computer science Keywords:type soundness; untyped lambda calculus; delegation-based object-oriented languages; type inference system; static detection of errors; operational semantics Software:Smalltalk; Eiffel PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{K. Fisher} et al., Nord. J. Comput. 1, No. 1, 3--37 (1994; Zbl 0886.03010)