Joining a plurality of type hierarchies in an object oriented programming language without inheriting from a base class and without modification to the type hiearchies

摘要

A system and method using a computer for joining a plurality of hierarchies of types is described. Each type in each type hierarchy includes a template for objects. At least one reference class is defined as computer-readable instructions stored in a memory of a computer for defining a class and includes a discriminator which can refer to instances of at least one such type within one of the type hierarchies and including, for each type hierarchy, an initialization function which takes as an argument a reference to an instance of any of the types in the type hierarchy. The initialization function included for each type hierarchy is performed by loading the discriminator with the argument of the initialization function.