The ROSS Language Manual.

Abstract

This Note summarizes the commands of the ROSS language. ROSS is an object-oriented programming language currently being developed at Rand. The goal of ROSS is to provide a programming environment in which users can conveniently design, test and change large knowledge-based simulations of complex mechanisms. Object-oriented programming languages, and ROSS in particular, enforce a 'message-passing' style of programming in which the system to be modeled is represented as a set of actors and their behaviors (rules for actor interaction). This style is especially suited to simulation, since the mechanism or process to be simulated may have a part-whole decomposition that maps naturally onto actors. The first section of this Note gives an overall view of the language and the philosophy behind object-oriented programming. The next eleven sections give detailed descriptions of the basic commands or behaviors of the language. The final two sections give advice on how to write English-like code in ROSS and how to optimize code, once debugged. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 1982
Accession Number
ADA121494

Entities

People

  • David L McArthur
  • Philip Klahr

Organizations

  • RAND Corporation

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Autonomy
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Command Centers
  • Computer Programming
  • Computer Science
  • Computers
  • Debugging
  • Environment
  • Language
  • Object Oriented Programming
  • Object-Oriented Programming Language
  • Philosophy
  • Procedural Programming Language
  • Programming Languages
  • Simulations
  • Simulators
  • Smalltalk Programming Language

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Computer Science.
  • Database Systems and Applications