Method schemas

The concept of <italic>method schemas</italic> is proposed as a simple model for object-oriented programming with features such as <italic>classes with methods and inheritance, method name overloading</italic>, and <italic>late binding</italic>. An important issue is to check whether a given method schema can possibly lead to inconsistencies in some interpretations. The consistency problem for method schemas is studied. The problem is shown to be undecidable in general. Decidability is obtained for <italic>monadic</italic> and/or <italic>recursion-free</italic> method schemas. The effect of <italic>covariance</italic> is considered. The issues of incremental consistency checking and of a sound algorithm for the general case are briefly discussed.

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