research-article

Characterising renaming within OCaml’s module system: theory and implementation

Authors:

Reuben N. S. Rowe,

Simon J. Thompson,

Scott OwensAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI 2019: Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Pages 950 - 965

https://doi.org/10.1145/3314221.3314600

Published: 08 June 2019 Publication History

Abstract

We present an abstract, set-theoretic denotational semantics for a significant subset of OCaml and its module system, allowing to reason about the correctness of renaming value bindings. Our semantics captures information about the binding structure of programs, as well as about which declarations are related by the use of different language constructs (e.g. functors, module types and module constraints). Correct renamings are precisely those that preserve this structure. We show that our abstract semantics is sound with respect to a (domain-theoretic) denotational model of the operational behaviour of programs, and that it allows us to prove various high-level, intuitive properties of renamings. This formal framework has been implemented in a prototype refactoring tool for OCaml that performs renaming.

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Cited By

Barwell ABrown CSarkar S(2024)Towards Specification-Guarded RefactoringLogic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_9(149-165)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_9
Thy SCostea AGopinathan KSergey I(2023)Adventure of a Lifetime: Extract Method Refactoring for RustProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228217:OOPSLA2(658-685)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622821
Horpácsi DKőszegi JNémeth D(2021)Towards a Generic Framework for Trustworthy Program RefactoringActa Cybernetica10.14232/actacyb.28434925:4(753-779)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.14232/actacyb.284349
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Index Terms

Characterising renaming within OCaml’s module system: theory and implementation
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Software maintenance tools
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program constructs
      1. Functional constructs
    2. Program semantics
      1. Denotational semantics

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cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI 2019: Proceedings of the 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 2019

1162 pages

ISBN:9781450367127

DOI:10.1145/3314221

General Chair:
Kathryn S. McKinley
Google, USA
,
Program Chair:
Kathleen Fisher
Tufts University, USA

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

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Published: 08 June 2019

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PLDI '19: 40th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 22 - 26, 2019

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Cited By

Barwell ABrown CSarkar S(2024)Towards Specification-Guarded RefactoringLogic-Based Program Synthesis and Transformation10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_9(149-165)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/978-3-031-71294-4_9
Thy SCostea AGopinathan KSergey I(2023)Adventure of a Lifetime: Extract Method Refactoring for RustProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36228217:OOPSLA2(658-685)Online publication date: 16-Oct-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3622821
Horpácsi DKőszegi JNémeth D(2021)Towards a Generic Framework for Trustworthy Program RefactoringActa Cybernetica10.14232/actacyb.28434925:4(753-779)Online publication date: 18-Mar-2021
https://doi.org/10.14232/actacyb.284349
Rowe RFérée HThompson SOwens STsantalis NCai YDemeyer S(2019)RotorProceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Refactoring10.1109/IWoR.2019.00013(27-30)Online publication date: 28-May-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/IWoR.2019.00013

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