Flexible Language Interoperability

machines raise the abstraction level of the execution environment at the cost of restricting the set of supported languages. Moreover, the ability of a language implementation to integrate with other languages hosted on the same virtual machine typically constrains the features of the language. In this paper, we present a highly flexible yet efficient approach to hosting multiple programming languages on an objectoriented virtual machine. Our approach is based on extending the interface of each class with language-specific wrapper methods, offering each language a tailored view of a given class. This approach can be deployed both on a statically typed virtual machine, such as the JVM, and on a dynamic virtual machine, such as a Smalltalk virtual machine. We have implemented our approach to language interoperability on top of a prototype virtual machine for embedded systems based on the Smalltalk object model, which provides interoperability for embedded versions of the Smalltalk, Ja...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2007
• Where: JOT
• Authors: Torbjörn Ekman, Peter Mechlenborg, Ulrik Pagh Schultz
• Keywords: JOT 2007, Machine, Objectoriented Virtual Machine, Virtual Machine