Article

Type-preserving garbage collectors

Authors:

Daniel C. Wang,

Andrew W. AppelAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '01: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 166 - 178

https://doi.org/10.1145/360204.360218

Published: 01 January 2001 Publication History

Abstract

By combining existing type systems with standard type-based compilation techniques, we describe how to write strongly typed programs that include a function that acts as a t racing garbage collector for the program. Since the garbage collector is an explicit function, we do not need to provide a t rusted garbage collector as a runtime service to manage memory.Since our language is strongly typed, the standard type soundness guarantee "Well typed programs do not go wrong" is extended to include the collector. Our type safety guarantee is non-trivial since not only does it guarantee the type safety of the garbage collector, but it guarantees that the collector preservers the type safety of the program being garbage collected. We describe the technique in detail and report performance measurements for a few microbench-marks as well as sketch the proofs of type soundness for our system.

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Cited By

Huang YYallop J(2023)Defunctionalization with Dependent TypesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912417:PLDI(516-538)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3591241
Hawblitzel CPetrank E(2010)Automated Verification of Practical Garbage CollectorsLogical Methods in Computer Science10.2168/LMCS-6(3:6)20106:3Online publication date: 18-Aug-2010
https://doi.org/10.2168/LMCS-6(3:6)2010
Hawblitzel CPetrank E(2009)Automated verification of practical garbage collectorsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1594834.148093544:1(441-453)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1594834.1480935
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Type-preserving garbage collectors
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
  2. Software organization and properties
    1. Contextual software domains
      1. Operating systems
        Memory management
        Garbage collection
2. Theory of computation

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By combining existing type systems with standard type-based compilation techniques, we describe how to write strongly typed programs that include a function that acts as a t racing garbage collector for the program. Since the garbage collector is an ...
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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

POPL '01: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

January 2001

304 pages

ISBN:1581133367

DOI:10.1145/360204

Chairmen:
Chris Hankin
Imperial College, London, U. K.
,
Dave Schmidt
Kansas State Univ., Manhattan

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 36, Issue 3
March 2001
303 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/373243
Editors:
Cindy Norris
Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC
,
James B. Fenwick
Appalachian State Univ., Boone, NC
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2001 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: 01 January 2001

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POPL '01 Paper Acceptance Rate 24 of 126 submissions, 19%;

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

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Cited By

Huang YYallop J(2023)Defunctionalization with Dependent TypesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/35912417:PLDI(516-538)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3591241
Hawblitzel CPetrank E(2010)Automated Verification of Practical Garbage CollectorsLogical Methods in Computer Science10.2168/LMCS-6(3:6)20106:3Online publication date: 18-Aug-2010
https://doi.org/10.2168/LMCS-6(3:6)2010
Hawblitzel CPetrank E(2009)Automated verification of practical garbage collectorsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1594834.148093544:1(441-453)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1594834.1480935
Hawblitzel CPetrank EShao ZPierce B(2009)Automated verification of practical garbage collectorsProceedings of the 36th annual ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages10.1145/1480881.1480935(441-453)Online publication date: 21-Jan-2009
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1480881.1480935
Torp-Smith NBirkedal LReynolds J(2008)Local reasoning about a copying garbage collectorACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/1377492.137749930:4(1-58)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2008
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1377492.1377499
McCreight AShao ZLin CLi L(2007)A general framework for certifying garbage collectors and their mutatorsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/1273442.125078842:6(468-479)Online publication date: 10-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1273442.1250788
McCreight AShao ZLin CLi LFerrante JMcKinley K(2007)A general framework for certifying garbage collectors and their mutatorsProceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/1250734.1250788(468-479)Online publication date: 15-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1250734.1250788
Hawblitzel CHuang HWittie LChen JPottier FNecula G(2007)A garbage-collecting typed assembly languageProceedings of the 2007 ACM SIGPLAN international workshop on Types in languages design and implementation10.1145/1190315.1190323(41-52)Online publication date: 16-Jan-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1190315.1190323
Lin CMcCreight AShao ZChen YGuo Y(2007)Foundational Typed Assembly Language with Certified Garbage CollectionProceedings of the First Joint IEEE/IFIP Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering10.1109/TASE.2007.28(326-338)Online publication date: 6-Jun-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/TASE.2007.28
Lin CChen YLi LHua B(2007)Garbage collector verification for proof-carrying codeJournal of Computer Science and Technology10.1007/s11390-007-9049-z22:3(426-437)Online publication date: 1-May-2007
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s11390-007-9049-z
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