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Contracts for First-Class Classes

Authors:

T. Stephen Strickland,

Christos Dimoulas,

Asumu Takikawa, and

Matthias FelleisenAuthors Info & Claims

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS), Volume 35, Issue 3

Article No.: 11, Pages 1 - 58

https://doi.org/10.1145/2518189

Published: 01 November 2013 Publication History

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Abstract

First-class classes enable programmers to abstract over patterns in the class hierarchy and to experiment with new forms of object-oriented programming such as mixins and traits. This increase in expressive power calls for tools to control the complexity of the software architecture. A contract system is one possible tool that has seen much use in object-oriented programming languages, but existing contract systems cannot cope with first-class classes. On the one hand, the typical contract language deals only with plain values such as numbers, while classes are higher-order values. On the other hand, contract specifications are usually contained within class definitions, while classes as values call for a separate contract language.

This article presents the design and implementation of a contract system for first-class classes as well as a two-pronged evaluation. The first one states and proves a “blame correctness” theorem for a model of our language. The theorem shows that when the contract system assigns blame to a component for a contract violation, the component is indeed responsible for providing the nonconforming value. The second part, consisting of benchmarks and case studies, demonstrates the need for the rich contract language and validates that our implementation approach is performant with respect to time.

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Abbasi KKhan THaq I(2021)Modeling-framework for model-based software engineering of complex Internet of things systemsMathematical Biosciences and Engineering10.3934/mbe.202145818:6(9312-9335)Online publication date: 2021
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Contracts for First-Class Classes

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Reviews

Reviewer: Nathan Carlson

Contracts are formal and verifiable specifications that extend traditional type definitions by including preconditions, postconditions, invariants, acceptable inputs and outputs, and other behavioral specifications [1]. These class-level specifications can be used to verify both usage and behavior of software components at runtime. This paper details the concept of blame, which is implemented in the Racket language. When a contract violation occurs, blame enables the system to accurately indicate the guilty party in the failed transaction. First-class classes, or classes that are in themselves objects, enable new ways of composing class types without resorting to multiple inheritance. Some mainstream languages such as Java and C# do not support first-class classes, while Ruby and Python do. Contract systems are intended to specify conditions about values, and not about classes themselves, and their relationships. Contracts are specified at a class level. Contract systems do not normally support meta-definition of contracts or the sharing of contracts between different classes without duplication of code. The authors present details of an innovative contract-based approach for working with first-class classes. The proposed approach includes both the design and implementation of a contract system for first-class classes, including some theoretical foundations and a formal proof of a new "blame correctness" theorem. The paper includes a practical evaluation and validation of the approach. It is well-researched and thorough, but its value is limited by a focus on both design by contract and languages that support first-class classes. However, the paper should prove valuable to those with interests in these areas. Online Computing Reviews Service

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems Volume 35, Issue 3

November 2013

156 pages

ISSN:0164-0925

EISSN:1558-4593

DOI:10.1145/2542180

Issue’s Table of Contents

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 the author(s) 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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Publication History

Published: 01 November 2013

Accepted: 01 May 2013

Revised: 01 November 2012

Received: 01 March 2012

Published in TOPLAS Volume 35, Issue 3

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Abbasi KKhan THaq I(2021)Modeling-framework for model-based software engineering of complex Internet of things systemsMathematical Biosciences and Engineering10.3934/mbe.202145818:6(9312-9335)Online publication date: 2021
https://doi.org/10.3934/mbe.2021458
Abbasi KKhan THaq I(2019)Hierarchical Modeling of Complex Internet of Things Systems Using Conceptual Modeling ApproachesIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2019.29309337(102772-102791)Online publication date: 2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2930933
Thüm TKnüppel AKrüger SBolle SSchaefer I(2019)Feature-oriented contract compositionJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2019.01.044152:C(83-107)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.jss.2019.01.044
Amin NRompf T(2017)LMS-Verify: abstraction without regret for verified systems programmingACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3093333.300986752:1(859-873)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3093333.3009867
Amin NRompf TCastagna GGordon A(2017)LMS-Verify: abstraction without regret for verified systems programmingProceedings of the 44th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages10.1145/3009837.3009867(859-873)Online publication date: 1-Jan-2017
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Castagna GGordon A(2017)Proceedings of the 44th ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming LanguagesundefinedOnline publication date: 1-Jan-2017
Dimoulas CNew MFindler RFelleisen M(2016)Oh Lord, please don't let contracts be misunderstood (functional pearl)ACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/3022670.295193051:9(117-131)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3022670.2951930
Dimoulas CNew MFindler RFelleisen MGarrigue JKeller GSumii E(2016)Oh Lord, please don't let contracts be misunderstood (functional pearl)Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional Programming10.1145/2951913.2951930(117-131)Online publication date: 4-Sep-2016
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Garrigue JKeller GSumii E(2016)Proceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Functional ProgrammingundefinedOnline publication date: 4-Sep-2016
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