Towards an Object Calculus ∗

The development of concurrent object-based programming languages has suffered from the lack of any generally accepted formal foundations for defining their semantics. Furthermore, the delicate relationship between object-oriented features supporting reuse and operational features concerning interaction and state change is poorly understood in a concurrent setting. To address this problem, we propose the development of an object calculus, borrowing heavily from relevant work in the area of process calculi. To this end, we briefly review some of this work, we pose some informal requirements for an object calculus, and we present the syntax, operational semantics and use through examples of a proposed object calculus, called OC.

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