Extending message handlers with pattern matching in the Jadescript programming language

Software agents are characterized by sophisticated messaging capabilities that support distributed problem solving and that provide the basic ingredients for interoperability in open agent-based systems. Jadescript is an agent-oriented programming language that has been recently proposed to offer programmers the abstractions that characterize agents to concretely and effectively support the implementation of complex agent-based systems. As expected, the abstractions that Jadescript provides include native support for the advanced messaging capabilities that characterize agents. This paper describes a recent development of Jadescript that extends the language with a native support for pattern matching designed to simplify the reception of structured messages and to ease the management of complex conversations. The proposed support for pattern matching is intimately correlated with the type system of the language, and it can be used to effectively associate inbound messages with specific handlers. From the point of view of programmers, the proposed support for pattern matching allows clearly expressing the intended scope of message handlers, and it contributes to raise the level of abstraction of the language.