1997toolsd W. Holst, and D. Szafron, Incremental Table-Based Method Dispatch for Reflective Object-Oriented Languages, IEEE Computer Society Technology of Object-Oriented Languages and Systems (TOOLS 23), R. Ege, M. Sing and B. Meyer (editors), Santa Barbara, California, July 1997, pp. 63-74.abstract or pdf.
Abstract:

A collection of algorithms and data structures are presented which provide incremental dispatch table modification. Incrementally modified dispatch tables allow table-based dispatch techniques to be used in reflective, dynamically typed, single-receiver languages with type/implementation-paired multiple inheritance. By storing a small amountof information, the algorithms can incrementally maintain the entire dispatch environment during the four fundamental environment modification requests: adding/removing selectors to/from classes and adding/removing class hierarchy links. The algorithms combine method dispatch calculation, inheritance management, and inheritance conflict detection into a single process, making the algorithms highly efficient. The algorithms also incrementally compute hierarchy information useful during compilation to establish which method addresses can be uniquely identified during compilation.