Bidirectional Object Layout for Separate Compilation

Andrew C. Myers
MIT Laboratory for Computer Science
545 Technology Square
Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
andru@lcs.mit.edu

Abstract:

Existing schemes for object layout and dispatch in the presence of multiple inheritance and separate compilation waste space and are slower than systems with single inheritance. This paper describes the bidirectional object layout, a new scheme for object layout that produces smaller objects and faster method invocations than existing schemes by automatically optimizing particular uses of multiple inheritance. The bidirectional object layout is used for the programming language Theta, and is applicable to languages like C++. This paper also demonstrates how to efficiently implement method dispatch when method signatures are allowed to change in subclasses. Most current statically compiled languages require identical signatures for efficiency.

This paper is also available in PostScript.

This paper appeared in the proceedings of OOPSLA '95. It also appeared in ACM SIGPLAN Notices 30(10), pp. 124-139.

This research was supported in part by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, monitored by the Office of Naval Research under contract N00014-91-J-4136 and in part by the National Science Foundation under grant CCR-8822158.

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