Javari : adding reference immutability to Java
Author(s)
Tschantz, Matthew S
DownloadFull printable version (5.942Mb)
Alternative title
Adding reference immutability to Java
Other Contributors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Advisor
Michael D. Ernst.
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
This paper describes a programming language, Javari, that is capable of expressing and enforcing immutability constraints. The specific constraint expressed is that the abstract state of the object to which an immutable reference refers cannot be modified using that reference. The abstract state is (part of) the transitively reachable state: that is, the state of the object and all state reachable from it by following references. The type system permits explicitly excluding fields from the abstract state of an object. For a statically type-safe language, the type system guarantees reference immutability. The type system is distinguishes the notions of assignability and mutability; integrates with Java's generic types and with multi-dimensional arrays; provides a mutability polymorphism approach to avoiding code duplication; and has type-safe support for reflection and serialization. This paper describes a core calculus including formal type rules for the language. Additionally, this paper describes a type inference algorithm that can be used convert existing Java programs to Javari. Experimental results from a prototype implementation of the algorithm are presented.
Description
Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2006. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-133).
Date issued
2006Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer SciencePublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.