MCI-Java: A Modified JVM Approach to Multiple Code Inheritance

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Chan, C.
  • Cutumisu, M.
  • Szafron, D.
  • Lu, P.

• Java has multiple inheritance of interfaces, but only single inheritance of code via classes. This situation results in duplicated code in Java library classes and application code. We describe a generalization to the Java language syntax and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to support multiple inheritance of code, called MCI-Java. Our approach places multiply-inherited code in a new language construct called an implementation, which lies between an interface and a class in the inheritance hierarchy. MCI-Java does not support multiply-inherited data, which can cause modeling and performance problems. The MCI-Java extension is implemented by making minimal changes to the Java syntax, small changes to a compiler (IBM Jikes), and modest localized changes to a JVM (SUN JDK 1.2.2). The JVM changes result in no measurable performance overhead in real applications.

• Date created

  2004

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Program constructs
  • Software notations and tools
  • General programming languages
  • Software and its engineering
  • Language types
  • Theory of computation
  • Language features
  • Semantics and reasoning
  • Inheritance
  • Object oriented constructs

• Type of Item

  Conference/Workshop Presentation

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3PZ5211C

• License

  © 2004. The USENIX Association. This version of this article is open access and can be downloaded and shared. The original author(s) and source must be cited.