First class continuation facilities in concurrent programming language Harmony/2

  • Ken Wakita
Invited Talk 6
First Online:
Part of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science book series (LNCS, volume 907)

Abstract

Harmony/2 is an Actor based object-oriented concurrent programming language. Its novel features include two frameworks of first class continuations, namely method continuations and message continuations. The article addresses the technical difficulty in integration of first class continuation facilities and concurrency models (VST problem) and then proposes two frameworks of first class continuation. Both frameworks prevent VST problem and guarantee system's soundness. Method continuation framework is a variant of traditional first continuation facility with added delayed installation semantics. It allows the safe use of continuations beyond objects' boundary and thus enabling construction of arbitrary control structures in concurrent environment. Message continuation framework is based on the observation that a message represents the continuation after the message sending. History sensitive semantics (one-shot property) and dynamic extent property given to message continuations makes the system free of VST. Two-way characteristics and synchronization semantics enables construction of arbitrary communication structures with high degree of concurrency.

Keywords

Message Passing Method Continuation Class Message Concurrency Model Future Object 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1995

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ken Wakita
    • 1
  1. 1.Tokyo Institute of TechnologyTokyoJapan

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