Javari : adding reference immutability to Java

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.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Tschantz, Matthew S

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael D. Ernst.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/42117

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/42117