Affiliations: Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Pisa, Pisa,
Italy. bellia@di.unipi.it; occhiuto@di.unipi.it
Note: [] Address for correspondence: Dipartimento di Informatica,
Universit`a di Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Abstract: The paper investigates the use of preprocessing in adding higher
order functionalities to Java, that is in passing methods to other methods. The
approach is based on a mechanism which offers a restricted, disciplined, form
of abstraction that is suitable to the integration of high order and object
oriented programming. We show how this integration can be exploited in
programming through the development of an example. Then, we discuss how the
expressive power of the language is improved. A new syntax is introduced for
formal and actual parameters, hence the paper defines a translation that, at
preprocessing time, maps programs of the extended language into programs of
ordinary Java.
Keywords: Higher order programming, object oriented programming, preprocessing
