Unpublished,
A Generic Framework for Genericity
(1998)English version of.
Abstract
Recently, generic programming becomes of a major interest in several
programming paradigms. A recurrent idea to achieve genericity is
to specify algorithms on their convenient data structure, and to
allow these specifications to be instantiated onto a large number
of neighboring data structures. Polytypic programming, shapely types
and generic attribute grammars are generic programming methods related
to this approach. A framework for generic programming is proposed
to embed these methods. It consists in tools for automatic generation
of morphisms between data structures, and for program composition.
Thanks to this compositional approach, the complete specialization
of generic programs could be advantageously delegated to a general
and powerful mechanism of ``symbolic composition'', which performs
deforestation and partial evaluation.
