Object specialization

Abstract

Specialization hierarchies typically are treated as type-level constructs and are used to define various inheritance mechanisms. In this paper we consider specialization at the level of objects. We show that doing so creates a more flexible and powerful notion of inheritance by allowing objects to define their own inheritance path. Object specialization can also be used to model certain forms of versioning, implement data abstraction, and provide a “classless” prototype-based language interface to the user.