The generalised computational model of Term Graph Rewriting Systems is used as the basis for expressing concurrent objectoriented programming techniques exploiting the fine grain highly parallel features of TGRS in a language independent fashion that rende

©Information and Software Technology, 1996 (to appear).

Concurrent object-oriented programming using termgraph rewriting techniques

George A Papadopoulos

Department of Computer Science, University of Cyprus, 75 Kallipoleos Str., Nicosia, P.O.B.537, CY 1678, CYPRUS. E-mail: george@turing.cs.ucy.ac.cy. Tel: +357-2-338705/06. Fax:+357-2-339062.

The generalised computational model of Term Graph Rewriting

Systems is used as the basis for expressing concurrent object-

oriented programming techniques exploiting the fine grain highly

parallel features of TGRS in a language independent fashion that

renders it able to act as the basis for developing specific

languages based on object-orientation but also to study and

compare existing approaches to the modelling of object-oriented

programming techniques such as delegation, various forms of

inheritance, etc.

Keywords: concurrent object-oriented programming, term graph rewriting systems(TGRS), implementation techniques, Dactl.

The generalised computational model of Term Graph Rewriting Systems (TGRS)7,23 has beenused extensively as an implementation vehicle for a number of, often divergent, programmingparadigms ranging from the traditional functional programming ones15,18 to the (concurrent)logic programming ones4,12,21. Recent studies have shown that TGRS are also able to act as ameans for implementing languages based on computational models such as ConcurrentConstraint Programming6, Linear Logic5,8 and π-calculus3,9.

In this paper we use TGRS and we exploit the high degree of fine grain parallelism available inthe model in expressing a variety of concurrent object-oriented programming techniques. Beingour framework language independent, it can serve as a basis for designing new concurrent