OPUS: a Formal Approach to Object-Orientation

OPUS is an elementary calculus that models object-orientation. It expresses in a direct way the crucial features of object-oriented programming such as objects, encapsulation, message passing and incremental modification. This is illustrated by numerous examples. Thanks to the way objects are constructed in this calculus, we can deal with self-reference, recursion and even mutual recursion in a straightforward way. We also illustrate that it is relatively easy to model different kinds of inheritance mechanisms. Finally, we argue to which extent our calculus can be used for modeling and investigating object-oriented concepts.

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