research-article

Ownership and immutability in generic Java

Authors:

Michael D. ErnstAuthors Info & Claims

OOPSLA '10: Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications

Pages 598 - 617

https://doi.org/10.1145/1869459.1869509

Published: 17 October 2010 Publication History

Abstract

The Java language lacks the important notions of ownership (an object owns its representation to prevent unwanted aliasing) and immutability (the division into mutable, immutable, and readonly data and references). Programmers are prone to design errors, such as representation exposure or violation of immutability contracts. This paper presents Ownership Immutability Generic Java (OIGJ), a backward-compatible purely-static language extension supporting ownership and immutability. We formally defined a core calculus for OIGJ, based on Featherweight Java, and proved it sound. We also implemented OIGJ and performed case studies on 33,000 lines of code.

Creation of immutable cyclic structures requires a "cooking phase" in which the structure is mutated but the outside world cannot observe this mutation. OIGJ uses ownership information to facilitate creation of immutable cyclic structures, by safely prolonging the cooking phase even after the constructor finishes.

OIGJ is easy for a programmer to use, and it is easy to implement (flow-insensitive, adding only 14 rules to those of Java). Yet, OIGJ is more expressive than previous ownership languages, in the sense that it can type-check more good code. OIGJ can express the factory and visitor patterns, and OIGJ can type-check Sun's java.util collections (except for the clone method) without refactoring and with only a small number of annotations. Previous work required major refactoring of existing code in order to fit its ownership restrictions. Forcing refactoring of well-designed code is undesirable because it costs programmer effort, degrades the design, and hinders adoption in the mainstream community.

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Kande NNitta N(2021)A Method to Comprehend Feature Dependencies Based on Semi-Static Structures2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00020(148-158)Online publication date: Sep-2021
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Index Terms

Ownership and immutability in generic Java
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. General programming languages
      1. Language features
      2. Language types
        Object oriented languages

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cover image ACM Conferences

OOPSLA '10: Proceedings of the ACM international conference on Object oriented programming systems languages and applications

October 2010

984 pages

ISBN:9781450302036

DOI:10.1145/1869459

General Chairs:
William R. Cook
University of Texas at Austin
,
Siobhán Clarke
Trinity College Dublin
,
Program Chairs:
Martin Rinard
MIT
,
Kevin J. Sullivan
University of Virginia
,
Daniel H. Steinberg
Dim Sum Thinking Inc.

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 45, Issue 10
OOPSLA '10
October 2010
957 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1932682
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2010 ACM.

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Published: 17 October 2010

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SPLASH '10: Systems Programming Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity

October 17 - 21, 2010

Nevada, Reno/Tahoe, USA

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Cited By

Parkinson MClebsch SWrigstad TBond MLee JPayer H(2024)Reference Counting Deeply Immutable Data Structures with Cycles: An Intellectual AbstractProceedings of the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Memory Management10.1145/3652024.3665507(131-141)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3652024.3665507
Kellogg MDaskiewicz DDuc Nguyen LAhmed MErnst M(2023)Pluggable Type Inference for Free2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186(1542-1554)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186
Kande NNitta N(2021)A Method to Comprehend Feature Dependencies Based on Semi-Static Structures2021 IEEE International Conference on Software Maintenance and Evolution (ICSME)10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00020(148-158)Online publication date: Sep-2021
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSME52107.2021.00020
Giannini PServetto MZucca E(2019)A Syntactic Model of Mutation and AliasingElectronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science10.4204/EPTCS.293.4293(39-55)Online publication date: 23-Apr-2019
https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.293.4
Giannini PServetto MZucca EHaddad HWainwright RChbeir R(2018)A type and effect system for uniqueness and immutabilityProceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing10.1145/3167132.3167245(1038-1045)Online publication date: 9-Apr-2018
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Gordon CErnst MGrossman DParkinson M(2017)Verifying Invariants of Lock-Free Data Structures with Rely-Guarantee and Refinement TypesACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/306485039:3(1-54)Online publication date: 10-May-2017
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Vekris PCosman BJhala R(2016)Refinement types for TypeScriptACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/2980983.290811051:6(310-325)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2016
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Milanova ADong YZheng YBinder WTůma P(2016)Inference and Checking of Object ImmutabilityProceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming on the Java Platform: Virtual Machines, Languages, and Tools10.1145/2972206.2972208(1-12)Online publication date: 29-Aug-2016
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Vekris PCosman BJhala RKrintz CBerger E(2016)Refinement types for TypeScriptProceedings of the 37th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/2908080.2908110(310-325)Online publication date: 2-Jun-2016
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Ryu S(2016)ThisType for Object-Oriented LanguagesACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems10.1145/288839238:3(1-66)Online publication date: 8-Apr-2016
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