Type theoretical foundations for data structures, classes, and objects

Abstract

In this thesis we explore the question of how to represent programming data structures in a constructive type theory. The basic data structures in programing languages are records and objects. Most known papers treat such data structure as primitive. That is, they add new primitive type constructors and supporting axioms for records and objects. This approach is not satisfactory. First of all it complicates a type theory a lot. Second, the validity of the new axioms is not easily established. As we will see the naive choice of axioms can lead to contradiction even in the simplest cases. We will show that records and objects can be defined in a powerful enough type theory. We will also show how to use these type