BLOCK STRUCTURED OBJECT PROGRAMMING

Most popular object oriented languages have a flat class declaration s tructure. Providing the possibility of nesting classes gives several i nteresting properties. Objects may hide their internal representation. Objects may be born within other objects whose structure they know. M eta classes may be implemented as singular, one of its kind, objects i n which are nested the classes they control. Languages of the scandina vian school of object oriented programming do offer these possibilitie s. The author has implemented them and experimented their effects in t he Newton language developped at-the Compiler Design Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.