| The object-oriented programming paradigm provides strong support for code re-use via inheritance mechanisms. Currently, Java is one of the most widely used objected-oriented programming languages, but Java supports only single code inheritance. Unfortunately, code repetition is sometimes unavoidable without some form of multiple code inheritance. Historically, multiple code inheritance mechanisms in programming languages have been problematic. This is due to the tight coupling of code and data layout, along with fundamental semantic issues with multiple data layout inheritance. Since Java's class mechanism is used for both inheriting code for methods (i.e., code-type) and inheriting state information (i.e., data-type), a mechanism for separating the code-type and data-type inheritance is necessary to solve the multiple code inheritance problem.; We describe the implementation of MCI-Java, an extension to Sun's Java 1.2.2 that separates code-types and data-types and thereby enables a multiple code inheritance mechanism. IBM's Jikes Compiler 1.15 is modified to provide compiler support for MCI-Java. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)... |
