research-article

Automatic inference of stationary fields: a generalization of java's final fields

Authors:

Christopher Unkel,

Monica S. LamAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '08: Proceedings of the 35th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 183 - 195

https://doi.org/10.1145/1328438.1328463

Published: 07 January 2008 Publication History

Abstract

Java programmers can document that the relationship between two objects is unchanging by declaring the field that encodes that relationship to be final. This information can be used in program understanding and detection of errors in new code additions. Unfortunately, few fields in programs are actually declared final. Programs often contain fields that could be final, but are not declared so. Moreover, the definition of final has restrictions on initializationthat limit its applicability.

We introduce stationary fields as a generalization of final. A field in a program is stationary if, for every object that contains it, all writes to the field occur before all the reads. Unlike the definition of final fields, there can be multiple writes during initialization, and initialization can span multiple methods.

We have developed an efficient algorithm for inferring which fields are stationary in a program, based on the observation that many fields acquire their value very close to object creation. We presume that an object's initialization phase has concluded when its reference is saved in some heap object. We perform precise analysis only regarding recently created objects. Applying our algorithm to real-world Java programs demonstrates that stationary fields are more common than final fields: 44-59% vs. 11-17% respectively in our benchmarks.

These surprising results have several significant implications. First, substantial portions of Java programs appear to be written in a functional style. Second, initialization of these fields occurs very close to object creation, when very good alias information is available. These results open the door for more accurate and efficient pointer alias analysis.

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Cited By

Flageol WGuéhéneuc YBadri MMonnier S(2023)Design Pattern for Reusing Immutable Methods in Object-Oriented LanguagesProceedings of the 28th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs10.1145/3628034.3628040(1-9)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628034.3628040
Cai YZhang C(2023)A Cocktail Approach to Practical Call Graph ConstructionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228337:OOPSLA2(1001-1033)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622833
Brandauer SWrigstad TGonzalez-Barahona JHindle ATan L(2017)SpencerProceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2017.35(113-123)Online publication date: 20-May-2017
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Index Terms

Automatic inference of stationary fields: a generalization of java's final fields
1. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning

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cover image ACM Conferences

POPL '08: Proceedings of the 35th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

January 2008

448 pages

ISBN:9781595936899

DOI:10.1145/1328438

General Chair:
George Necula
University of California, Berkeley
,
Program Chair:
Philip Wadler
University of Edinburgh

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 43, Issue 1
POPL '08
January 2008
420 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1328897
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2008 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 07 January 2008

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January 7 - 12, 2008

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Overall Acceptance Rate 824 of 4,130 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Flageol WGuéhéneuc YBadri MMonnier S(2023)Design Pattern for Reusing Immutable Methods in Object-Oriented LanguagesProceedings of the 28th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs10.1145/3628034.3628040(1-9)Online publication date: 5-Jul-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3628034.3628040
Cai YZhang C(2023)A Cocktail Approach to Practical Call Graph ConstructionProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228337:OOPSLA2(1001-1033)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622833
Brandauer SWrigstad TGonzalez-Barahona JHindle ATan L(2017)SpencerProceedings of the 14th International Conference on Mining Software Repositories10.1109/MSR.2017.35(113-123)Online publication date: 20-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/MSR.2017.35
Rama GKomondoor R(2017)Detecting Full Initialization Points of Objects to Support Code Refactorings2017 24th Asia-Pacific Software Engineering Conference (APSEC)10.1109/APSEC.2017.17(110-119)Online publication date: Dec-2017
https://doi.org/10.1109/APSEC.2017.17
Coblenz MSunshine JAldrich JMyers BWeber SShull FDillon LVisser WWilliams L(2016)Exploring language support for immutabilityProceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering10.1145/2884781.2884798(736-747)Online publication date: 14-May-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2884781.2884798
Pezzé MWuttke J(2016)Model-driven generation of runtime checks for system propertiesInternational Journal on Software Tools for Technology Transfer (STTT)10.1007/s10009-014-0325-218:1(1-19)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2016
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Parízek P(2016)Hybrid Analysis for Partial Order Reduction of Programs with ArraysProceedings of the 17th International Conference on Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation - Volume 958310.1007/978-3-662-49122-5_14(291-310)Online publication date: 17-Jan-2016
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Rosà AZheng YSun HJaved OBinder W(2016)Adaptable Runtime Monitoring for the Java Virtual MachineLeveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation: Discussion, Dissemination, Applications10.1007/978-3-319-47169-3_42(531-546)Online publication date: 5-Oct-2016
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Parízek PLhoták O(2015)Model checking of concurrent programs with static analysis of field accessesScience of Computer Programming10.1016/j.scico.2014.10.00898:P4(735-763)Online publication date: 1-Feb-2015
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Zheng YBulej LZhang CKell SAnsaloni DBinder WBockisch CHaupt MBlackburn SRajan HGil J(2013)Dynamic optimization of bytecode instrumentationProceedings of the 7th ACM workshop on Virtual machines and intermediate languages10.1145/2542142.2542145(21-30)Online publication date: 28-Oct-2013
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