The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 20, 2004
Filed:
Aug. 13, 1999
Gilad Bracha, Los Altos, CA (US);
Sun Microsystems, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
A mechanism is disclosed for constructing dispatch tables which enable transitive method override. A dispatch table for a class C (wherein C is within a package P and is a subclass of superclass S) is constructed as follows. First, the S dispatch table is copied and is used as the starting point for the C dispatch table. Then, for each locally declared method m in C, the method m is checked to determine whether it has been marked public/protected. If so, then the S dispatch table is checked for a public/protected entry corresponding to a method having the same name as method m. If such an entry is found, then the corresponding entry in the C dispatch table is overridden. Otherwise, a new entry is allocated in the C dispatch table and is marked public/protected. In addition, the S dispatch table is checked for a package private (private to package P) entry corresponding to a method having the same name as method m. If such an entry is found, then the corresponding entry in the C dispatch table is overridden and is marked public/protected. If, on the other hand, the method m is marked package private, then the S dispatch table is checked for a package private entry (private to package P) corresponding to a method having the same name as method m. If such an entry is found, then the corresponding entry in the C dispatch table is overridden. Otherwise, a new entry is allocated in the C dispatch table and is marked package private. In addition, the S dispatch table is checked for a public/protected entry corresponding to a method having the same name as method m. If such an entry is found, then the corresponding entry in the C dispatch table is overridden, but that entry's public/protected marking is maintained. Constructed in this manner, the C dispatch table will support transitive method override.