Objects in Forum

15 Pages·2007·0.2 MB·English

Objects in Forum
Giorgio Delzanno and Maurizio Martelli
D.I.S.I. - Universita(cid:18) di Genova,
Via Dodecaneso, 35, I-16146 Genova, Italy
e-mail: fgiorgio,[email protected]
Abstract
A logical characterization of the typical features ofobject-oriented languages
could yield a clear semantical counterpart of their operational meaning and,
at the same time, it could allow to de(cid:12)ne a logic programming language in
which it is possible to reason over highly-complex data structures.
Many approaches to this problem have been proposed in the last years.
Classical logic turned out to be unsuitable to model complex mechanisms,
suchasthedynamicmodi(cid:12)cationsofthestateoftheobjects,inasatisfactory
way.
Girard's Linear Logic [5] provides the means to handle many opera-
tionalaspectsofprogramminglanguagesfromaprooftheoreticalperspective
as shown by Andreoli and Pareschi in [2].
In the paper Forum [11], a presentation of higher-order linear logic, is
specialized todealwithstate-basedsystemsaccordingtotheproof ascompu-
tationperspective. In thissettingitispossible torepresentaconcretenotion
ofobjectassigning alogical meaning tofeatureslike class,encapsulationand
data abstraction.
This should be considered as the (cid:12)rst step to reconstruct a complete
object-oriented language inside a linear logic-based framework.
1 Introduction
Logic and object-oriented (OO) languages are vehicles to achieve di(cid:11)erent
forms of high-level programming. Logic programming allows to write exe-
cutable speci(cid:12)cations having both a declarative and a procedural reading,
while OOprogrammingallowstoincrementally build upcomplex structures,
hidingboththeirinternalrepresentationandtheimplementationoftheircor-
responding operations. Hence, complex objects can be handled using very
simple protocols, i.e., the public interfaces of the objects.
The challenge is to (cid:12)nd a way of enjoying these two di(cid:11)erent forms of
high-level reasoning inside the same language. Furthermore, a faithful rep-
resentation of features typical of OO within a logic language can provide
them with a clear semantics, induced by their logical reading.
It is necessary to clarify which OO features will be considered in the pa-
per. Themostimportantgoalistocaptureanotionofobjectclosetoexisting
implementations, i.e., a structure encapsulating both data and operations.
Another fundamental feature is data abstraction, i.e., the data of the ob-
jects mustbe accessible only using the methodsand, asa consequence, parts
oftheobjectstructuremustbehidden. Message passingmustbe thebasic
mechanism underlying communication between objects. Finally, it is neces-
sary to consider primitives tocreate objects,hence todeclare the class they
belong to, and to destroy them. For the sake of this presentation messages
will be considered as completely concurrent activities.
According to Peter Wegner's classi(cid:12)cation of OO languages [14], class-
based languages enjoy such set of features.
In many logic models of OO features, methods are represented by logic
clausesandused torewrite thestateofanobjectintoanewone, see [2,4,9].
From this perspective, in order to model encapsulation it is necessary to re-
sort to a higher-order logic, where clauses can be handled at the object
level. At the same time, standard logic approaches to the problem of state
modi(cid:12)cations seem unsuitable here, while Linear Logic (LL) [5] provides a
notionofresourceconsumptionwhichhasbeen fruitfullyapplied byAndreoli
and Pareschi [2] in such context. For this reason the language Forum [11]
which combines both higher-order and linear logic, seems a perfect starting
point to study the problem. The form of Forum rules allows to de(cid:12)ne only
uniform proofs [12], i.e., goal-driven proofs, anotion suitable forautomating
the search for proofs while presenting aspects useful for programming appli-
cations. A restricted version of Forum, called Forum and Objects (F&O),
will be presented in Section 2. F&O is powerful enough to capture the
above mentioned OO features. This is the (cid:12)rst step in order to reconstruct
a complete OO language inside a logical framework, i.e., considering also
inheritance, delegation, etc. The formulation of the F&O proof system em-
phasizes the proof as computation perspective. It can be considered as an
attemptto(cid:12)tageneral notion ofstate intoaLL sequent. Stateinformation
are represented using a (cid:12)xed set of data constructors.
Section 3 presents a simple application of F&O to the sequential assign-
ment of values to variables.
Section4isdedicatedtothediscussion oftherelationships betweenF&O
and Forum, hence full LL.
Section 5, the main part of the paper, contains the description of the
abovementioned OOfeaturesin F&O. Themainidea istorepresentobjects
as particular atoms that can be handled by methods using an approach
similar to the one shown by Conery in [4] and re-considered by Andreoli and
Pareschi in [2] inside the LL setting. However, there are many di(cid:11)erences
between the latter and the work presented in this paper. Andreoli and
Pareschi considered objects as collections of slots spread in the right-hand
side of a sequent, i.e., in parallel. Objects were created, i.e., cloned, using
additiveconjunction, &,whichspreadsthemondi(cid:11)erentbranchesofaproof.
In the approach, presented in the following, objects (cid:13)ow in parallel in the
right-hand side of sequents together with messages. This choice allows to
keepasnapshotoftheglobalstateofthesystemineachsequent,andtoeasily
create and destroy objects. F&O proofs, with only one main thread, can be
usedtorepresenttheevolutionofthestate. Theconnective&shouldbeused
either totest conditions overthe global stateor toexecute operations whose
computation departs from the main thread without yielding new states,i.e.,
their proofs end with a > axiom. Such use of & will be studied in future
works. In this setting communication amongobjects can be achieved simply
adding messages to the global context.
Section 6 is dedicated to the discussion of a (cid:21)-Prolog prototype for a
particular OO language, and to the future extensions of the work.
2 The language F&O
As mentioned in the introduction, our main goal here is to represent a class-
based language using a LL sequent calculus. In order to achieve this target
wewillexploitasubsetofForum[11]inaformulationinwhichtheright-hand
side of a sequent is a multi-set of formulas. In particular, the intuitionistic
implication is not necessary here, indeed we consider formulas which resem-
ble the usual logic programming clauses augmented with linear implication
and universal quanti(cid:12)cation in the body. The resulting proof system F&O
could be used to reason about state based systems as shown in the example
in Section 3.
Following Miller's approach, it is possible to consider a language based
on simply typed lambda terms. In this setting formulas are nothing but a
subset of (cid:21)-terms having a given type o.
The notion ofstate is represented using atomswhose top level predicate,
a state constructor, belongs to the signature (cid:6)S, which must be (cid:12)xed a
priori; (cid:5)(cid:6)S will denote the set of such atoms. It is assumed that every other
signature (cid:6), occurring in a sequent, contains (cid:6)S.
Accordingtothe(cid:21)-calculusnotationthelogicalconnectivesareconstants
having o as target type; the LL connectives considered in the language are
..............................................................................................., &, 8(cid:28), (cid:14)(cid:0), > and ?, thus, for instance, ...............................................................................................has type o ! o ! o and 8(cid:28) has
type ((cid:28) ! o) ! o, i.e., it expects an abstraction as unique argument, which
represents the scope of the quanti(cid:12)ed variable.
2.1 F&O Formulas
TheconsideredformulasareasubsetofForumformulas,namelythesmallest
one generated by the following grammar:
D ::= 8(H(cid:14)(cid:0)G)jD1&D2
G ::= G1&G2 jG1 ...............................................................................................G2 j8(cid:28)X:Gj> j ? jH(cid:14)(cid:0)D jA
H ::=H1 ...............................................................................................H2 j A
whereAis anatomicformula. AD-formulacanbe aconjunction offormulas
orasimple multi-headed clause where all theformulasappearing inthe head
areatomic. Allthefreevariablesin aclauseareuniversally quanti(cid:12)ed; thisis
themeaningofthenotation8(H(cid:14)(cid:0)G). Thiskindofclausescanbeconsidered
asanextensionoftheLOclauses[2],sinceuniversalquanti(cid:12)cationandlinear
implication can appear in the body. Under the same perspective G-formulas
canbeconsideredasextensionsofusualgoals,withimplication anduniversal
quanti(cid:12)cation (hence the notation 8G). It is also important to observe that
D-formulas cannot contain ? and > in their heads.
2.2 Sequents and rules
In order to highlight the role of state, usual Forum sequents are modi(cid:12)ed in
the following way (cid:6) :P;R!S M, where (cid:6) is a signature containing all the
typed constants of the sequent, P is a multi-set of D-formulas in clausal
form, i.e., 8(H (cid:14)(cid:0)G), R is a multi-set of D-formulas, M is a multi-set of
G-formulas and S is a multi-set of atoms in (cid:5)(cid:6)S. The intuition is that P
corresponds to a set of global de(cid:12)nitions (always usable, i.e, !c for every c
in P where ! is the LL connective which allows to duplicate occurrences of
formulas), R is a set of bounded-use de(cid:12)nitions, i.e., which are consumed
when used in a proof, S can be considered as the current stateof the system
to be simulated and, (cid:12)nally, M is the multi-set of pending activities in
the system, e.g., messages. In LL, the previous sequent can be read as:
(cid:10)c2P!c (cid:10)(cid:10)c2Rc! (...............................................................................................m2M[S m),where (cid:10) is the multiplicative conjunction.
The set of Forum rules [11] can be instantiated to cope with the above
described sequents. The resulting system is depicted in Figure 1. The two
backchaining rules have the proviso that fAi[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)]gi:1::n (cid:17) S ] N, where
] denotes the multi-set union and fAigi:1::n corresponds to the multi-set
fA1;:::;Ang. Furthermore, the right-hand side N;Q is required to contain
only atomic formulas which are not in (cid:5)(cid:6)S. The lwith rules have the same
proviso on N. In this way, before applying a left rule, it is necessary to
eliminate all the compound formulas in the right-hand side adding all the
state atoms in M to the global S, i.e., uniformity of proofs is enriched by a
new condition. It is possible to give alternative formulations of the system,
e.g., embedding add into a special version of par.
The rule forall requires y not to appear in the lower sequent. This is an
important point and it can be exploited to achieve data hiding, as shown
in [6, 10]. It is easy to check that each one of the previous rules preserves
well-formed F&O sequents.
The most interesting thing of the system is the axiom (cid:12)nal. It is in-
troduced to emphasize the idea of proof as computation; this aspect will be
discussed in Section 4. Essentially, the form of the (cid:12)nal axiom express in-
formation about the answer to an initial query (i.e., the state Sf), obtained
when all the messages have been successfully processed.
Thebackchaining rulesprovidethebasicmechanismtoprocessmessages.
Their behavior is similar to the behavior of a resolution step in a standard
LP language. Notice also the non-deterministic splitting of the contexts.
The use of par allows to treat the state components and the messages as
(cid:12)nal all
(cid:6) :P;!Sf (cid:6):P;R!S >;M
A 2 (cid:5)(cid:6)S (cid:6):P;R!A;S M (cid:6): P;R!S M
add anti
(cid:6) :P;R!S A;M (cid:6) :P;R!S ?;M
(cid:6):P;R!S A;B;M
(cid:6) :P;R!S A ...............................................................................................B;M par
(cid:6): P;R!S A;M (cid:6) :P;R!S B;M
rwith
(cid:6) :P;R!S A&B;M
(cid:6):P;B;R!S A;M y :(cid:28);(cid:6):P;R!S B[y=X];M
impl forall
(cid:6):P;R!S A(cid:14)(cid:0)B;M (cid:6) :P;R!S 8(cid:28)X:B;M
(cid:6): P;A;R!S N (cid:6) :P;B;R!S N
lwith lwith
(cid:6):P;A&B;R!S N (cid:6):P;A&B;R!S N
t(cid:22)(cid:6)-terms (cid:6):8x(cid:22):(...............................................................................................i:1::n Ai(cid:14)(cid:0)B);P;R!T B[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)];Q backchaining-1
(cid:6): 8x(cid:22):(...............................................................................................i:1::n Ai(cid:14)(cid:0)B);P;R!S;T N;Q
t(cid:22)(cid:6)-term (cid:6) :P;R!T B[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)];Q backchaining-2
(cid:6): P;8x(cid:22):(...............................................................................................i:1::n Ai(cid:14)(cid:0)B);R!S;T N;Q
Figure 1: F&O Proof system
concurrent processes. Indeed, the par rule simply reduces the components
of a par into a multi-set of formulas. Using & on the right allows to create
independent sets of processes, each of them yielding a di(cid:11)erent (cid:12)nal state,
e.g., the above mentioned language LO. Furthermore, it can be used to de-
rive auxiliary branches in a proof ended by the all axiom. They correspond
to executions of auxiliary operations which do not yield (cid:12)nal states. Occur-
rences of & in the left-hand side of sequents provide non-determinism in the
choice of one of its conjuncts.
It is possible to model internal evolution of the state, i.e., without in-
tervention of external agents, for instance using clauses with only one state
atom in the head. In our main application, i.e., an OO system, only modi-
(cid:12)cations due to external agents will be considered.
3 On the dynamics
As mentioned in the introduction, the main goal of the paper is to model,
using the above described F&O language, systems which can dynamically
modify their state. The rules of the proof system are designed in order to
provide a form of multi-set rewriting as in [2, 7, 9, 11]. In particular, the
application of a backchaining rule entails picking up atoms in the current
(cid:6) :Passign;!(x 2);(y 1);(z 1)
(cid:6) :Passign;!(x 2);(y 1);(z 1) ?
(cid:6) :Passign;!(x 2);(y 2);(z 1) (assign y z ?)
:::
(cid:6) :Passign;!(z 1) (assign y z ?)...............................................................................................(x 2)...............................................................................................(y 2)
(cid:6) :Passign;!(x 1);(y 2);(z 1) (assign x y (assign y z ?))
:::
(cid:6) :Passign;!(y 2) (assign x y (assign y z ?))...............................................................................................(z 1)...............................................................................................(x 1)
(cid:6): Passign;!(x 1);(y 2);(z 0) (assign z x (assign x y (assign y z ?)))
Figure 2: Swapping with nested assignments
state and in the multi-set of messages, rewriting them in a new state and
new messages.
The assignment of values to variables is a good example to show how
F&O can be used to simulate the behavior of imperative paradigms.
As previously mentioned it is necessary to (cid:12)x a signature (cid:6) containing
(cid:6)S: the state constructors are x;y;z having type i! o, the other constants
are 0;1;2 having type i and the predicate assign having type (i ! o) !
(i ! o) ! o ! o. The program executing the assignment is the following
D-formula:
Passign (cid:17) 8i!oX;Y:8iV;W:8oG
(assign X Y G)...............................................................................................(X V)...............................................................................................(Y W) (cid:14)(cid:0)
G ...............................................................................................(X W)...............................................................................................(Y W)
Figure 2 shows the computation to swap the values of the variables x and y
usingz asauxiliaryone. Noticethattherecanbeonlyoneproofforthequery
of the example, i.e., Passign forcesthe computation tobe deterministic. This
behavior is due to the imposed sequentiality between assignments, which is
achievedusingcontinuations,i.e.,passingtheoperations,stilltobeexecuted,
as last parameter to assign. Without goal passing, e.g., if all the queries
were at the same level with two par, the computation would become non-
deterministic, i.e., there could be di(cid:11)erent proof trees with di(cid:11)erent (cid:12)nal
states.
Second order quanti(cid:12)cation, used in Passign, allows to de(cid:12)ne in a nat-
ural way a program which is able to handle the assignment to any pair of
variables.
A simpler de(cid:12)nition for the swap predicate can be the following:
Pswap1 (cid:17) 8i!oX;Y:8iV;W:8oG
(swap X Y G)...............................................................................................(X V)...............................................................................................(Y W) (cid:14)(cid:0)
G ...............................................................................................(X W)...............................................................................................(Y V).
This is a very simple but clear example of the type of reasoning allowed by
F&O and more generally by Forum.
4 Relationships with Forum
F&O proofs can represent the operational behavior of a programming sys-
tem. This interpretation is based on the description of the transitions be-
tween states. In order to understand the logical meaning of such mechanism
it is necessary to study the relationships with Forum proofs, since in such
setting it is possible to interpret proofs as computations [11].
A proof (cid:25) for an F&O sequent s is a (cid:12)nite tree where the leaves are
instantiations of the (cid:12)nal and all axioms and the inner nodes correspond to
applications of the remaining rules. In the following (cid:25) `fo (cid:6) : P;R !S
M and (cid:25) `fm (cid:6) : P;R ! M will denote a proof (cid:25) for an F&O and a
Forum sequent, respectively. Furthermore, if S is the multi-set of formulas
fF1;:::;Fng, then ...............................................................................................S will denote ...............................................................................................i:1::n Fi.
Let P be a multi-set of F&O D-clauses, R a multi-set of D-formulas, S
a multi-set of state atoms and M a multi-set of goals.
Theorem 4.1 F&O and Forum proofs
There exists (cid:25) s.t. (cid:25) `fo (cid:6) : P;R !S M with (cid:12)nal axioms (cid:6)i : P;!Si,
i: 1::n, i(cid:11)there exists(cid:26)s.t. (cid:26)`fm (cid:6) :P;R;F ! S;Mand F istheformula
&i:1::n8c(cid:22)i: ...............................................................................................Si where c(cid:22)i is a list of constants with the proper type containing
at least the set (cid:6)in(cid:6).
The previous theorem re(cid:13)ects the above mentioned interpretation of
proofs as computations. Namely, given an initial state Si and a (cid:12)nal state
state Sf, the aim is proving `fo Si (cid:14)(cid:0) Sf, hence Sf `fo Si, i.e., proving
that there are a sequence of transitions from the initial to the (cid:12)nal state,
which are expressed by linear implications. Since it is necessary to take into
account the occurrences of & and 8 in the right-hand side of the sequents
the formula representing Sf, the residue, assumes a more complicated form,
namely &i:1::n8x(cid:22)i: ...............................................................................................Si[x(cid:22)i=c(cid:22)i] as in the assert above. The outermost & in-
dicates the presence of one or more (cid:12)nal states while the quanti(cid:12)cation is
necessary to hide the new constants which have been introduced during the
proof (i.e., right-hand side occurrences of the universal quanti(cid:12)cation).
F&O proofscan be translatedinto Forumproofsproviding (cid:12)rsta proper
0
mapping of the backchaining rules. For instance, let P (cid:17) 8x(cid:22):(A(cid:14)(cid:0)B);P
thenbackchaining-1hasthefollowingcorrespondingForuminferential(cid:12)gure:
(cid:14)
(cid:6) :P0;A[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)]! N;S (cid:6): P0;R! B[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)];Q;T
:::
(cid:6):P0;(A[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)](cid:14)(cid:0)B[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)]);R! N;Q;S;T
0
(cid:6): P ;8x(cid:22):(A(cid:14)(cid:0)B);R! N;Q;S;T
0
(cid:6) :P ;R! N;Q;S;T
where, A (cid:17)...............................................................................................i:1::n Ai and S ] N (cid:17) fAi[t(cid:22)=x(cid:22)]gi:1::n. Notice that the lowest
rule application is the Forum rule decide and that (cid:14) is simply an iterated
application of the Forum rule ...............................................................................................L of [11]. Using such kind of schemes it is
possible to mimic an F&O proof, just observing that, in the corresponding
Forum proof, the use of the residue can be delayed until a (cid:12)nal axiom is
reached.
Viceversa, in order to map a Forum proof into F&O, for the considered
set of F&O sequents, it is necessary to apply a set of permutation schemes
thatallow to collapse stepsof aForum proofinto inferential (cid:12)gures of F&O.
Again, it is possible to permute the rules so that, in the resulting proof, the
residual formula is consumed in its last steps, i.e., it is possible to substi-
tute, with a (cid:12)nal axiom, the subtrees close to the leaves and involving only
residues.
5 Objects in F&O
As already mentioned in the introduction, F&O is powerful enough tofaith-
fully reconstruct the operational behavior of a class-based language. In
order to prove this claim a representation for objects, methods and classes
will be introduced in this Section.
Objects will be represented by atomic formulas. This representation al-
lows to easily create and destroy objects, and also to de(cid:12)ne patterns match-
ingwiththem. Classeswillberepresentedbyuniversallyquanti(cid:12)edformulas,
expressing the structure of objects. Auxiliary operations will be expressed
by atomic formulas, too, e.g., the new, send and kill operations. According
to these ideas, an F&O sequent assumes the following form:
(cid:6) :P;R!o1;:::;on M;(cid:10)
where P consists of the set of the de(cid:12)nitions of classes and auxiliary opera-
tions; o1;:::;on is a multi-set of atoms representing all the living objects in
the system, i.e., the global state; R contains the currently (cid:12)red methods,
i.e., picked up from inside an object; M is the set of pending messages; (cid:10) is
the set of remaining invocations, i.e., auxiliary operations.
5.1 Objects as atoms
Let i be a generic type and id a symbol with type (cid:28) = i ! o ! o, objects
are represented by atoms having the form:
(id Attrs (M1 &::: & Mn))
In such representation id acts both as object constructor and identi(cid:12)er of
the object itself. Such identi(cid:12)ers could be expressed by the application of
another constant, e.g.,name having type int ! (cid:28), to a new integer n (w.r.t.
the other objects in the systems), e.g., id (cid:17) (name n). Attrs could be any
term in which information about the current state can be stored (it could
be reasonable to consider here either lists or pairs of attributes). The last
(id (s null) (M1 & M2) ) where
M1 (cid:17) 8iX:8oMs:
(id (s X) Ms) ...............................................................................................(id:(get X)) (cid:14)(cid:0) (id (s X) Ms):
M2 (cid:17) 8iX:8iY:8oMs:
(id (s X) Ms) ...............................................................................................(id:(put Y)) (cid:14)(cid:0) (id (s Y) Ms):
Figure 3: A simple object
parameter represents the collection of methods of the object. Actually it is
a conjunction of D-formulas Mi, i : 1::n, where each Mi is a rewriting rule
for the object itself. Indeed, methods have the following form:
8x(cid:22):(id Attrs Ms) ...............................................................................................(id:Head) (cid:14)(cid:0)
(id Attrs0 Ms0)...............................................................................................Msg1 ...............................................................................................:::...............................................................................................Msgn
where id is the identi(cid:12)er of the object, (cid:12)xed at the moment of the creation,
x(cid:22) denotes all the free variables of the clause and Head is a term expressing
the name of the method and the parameters. It is necessary to consider id,
the name of the object, together with Head in order to avoid that messages
with the same name are delivered to the wrong objects, hence the constant
: has type (cid:28) ! i ! o (using an in(cid:12)x notation for it). Each message Msgi,
i : 1::n can be one of the following: a method invocation represented by
(send (Id : Msg)) where send is a constant with type o ! o and Id a
variable in x(cid:22) or a constant name; a creation message (new class name Id)
where new has type i ! (cid:28) ! o; a killing message (kill Id), where kill has
type(cid:28) ! o; theinvocation ofauxiliary operations(e.g.,appendbetweenlists
if its de(cid:12)nition occurs in P).
Figure 3 shows a simple object having a single attribute de(cid:12)ned through
aconstructors havingtype i! iandtwomethods, getandput, respectively
de(cid:12)ned to retrieve the value kept by s and to change it. The constants get
and put have type i ! i ! i, null is a constant of type i. Each method
is nothing but a rewriting rule for the corresponding object. Quanti(cid:12)cation
over Ms in the de(cid:12)nition allows to get rid of the structure of the methods
(their de(cid:12)nitions are inside the object itself).
Such representation allows to achieve data and methods encapsulation.
It is interesting how to use universal quanti(cid:12)ers to achieve data abstraction.
To explain this aspect it is necessary to introduce a simple notion of class.
5.1.1 Formulas representing classes
A simple waytopresent classes is to consider them astemplates forcreating
new objects. As already mentioned objects should be placed in the current
state S of sequents. Furthermore, the creation process should be activated
when a new message occurs in the context of the operations. According to
(cid:6): P;R!(id as ms);S M;(cid:10) add
(cid:6) :P;R!S (id as ms);M;(cid:10) backchaining-1
(cid:6):P;R!S M;(new class name id);(cid:10)
Figure 4: Creation of a new object
these requirements classes can be represented by the following formulas in
the unbounded-use context (P in our notation):
8(cid:28)Id: (new class name Id)(cid:14)(cid:0)(Id as ms)
where class name is a term acting as the class name and as, ms are given
patterns for the attributes and the methods. It can be observed here that
higher-order quanti(cid:12)cation (over Id) is used in order to deal with newly
created identi(cid:12)ers to be supplied by an external agent. Figure 4 shows how
the system reacts to a new invocation according to the previous de(cid:12)nition.
5.1.2 Hiding using universal quanti(cid:12)cation
The internal data of an object must be accessible only through the interface
that the object provides to the external users. This means that there must
be a way of hiding parts of the object, data as well as methods. Universal
quanti(cid:12)cation, in the body of the clauses representing classes, can be used
for such aim. Thus, the previous class de(cid:12)nition can be reformulated as
follows:
8(cid:28)Id: (new class name Id) (cid:14)(cid:0) 8x(cid:22): (Id as ms)
where x(cid:22) is a vector of variables, which range over the attribute constructors
and the names of the private methods.
Figure 5 shows a class point with private data de(cid:12)ned by a Pair con-
structor, a private method, Set, which rewrites simultaneously a pair into
a new one, and a public one, put, which resorts to Set to rewrite only the
(cid:12)rst component keeping the other one (cid:12)xed. When the de(cid:12)nition of such a
class is placed in the right-hand side of a sequent, the universal quanti(cid:12)ers
are eliminated introducing new constants for Set and Pair, see rule forall
in Section 2.2. The side condition of that rule requires that the constants
do not appear in formulas at the same level of the new invocation, i.e., they
are visible only inside the method de(cid:12)nition of the considered object. In
the example in Figure 5, it turns out that the scope of the quanti(cid:12)cation
over Pair extends over the de(cid:12)nitions of the methods M1 and M2. In this
way both methods can access the data, as expected. Figure 6 shows the
sequence of inferences in presence of universal quanti(cid:12)ers. On the basis of
the previous assumption, it is possible to describe the mechanism to handle
messages.