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Behavioural Types for Memory and Method Safety in a Core Object-Oriented Language

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Programming Languages and Systems (APLAS 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12470))

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Abstract

We present a type-based analysis ensuring memory safety and object protocol completion in the Java-like language Mungo. Objects are annotated with usages, typestates-like specifications of the admissible sequences of method calls. The analysis entwines usage checking, controlling the order in which methods are called, with a static check determining whether references may contain null values. It prevents null pointer dereferencing in a typestate-aware manner and memory leaks and ensures that the intended usage protocol of every object is respected and completed. The type system admits an algorithm that infers the most general usage with respect to a simulation preorder. The type system is implemented in the form of a type checker and a usage inference tool.

Work partially supported by the EU H2020 RISE programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 778233 (BehAPI), the UK EPSRC grant EP/K034413/1 (ABCD), and by NOVA LINCS (UIDB/04516/2020) via FCT.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We use \(\uplus \) to denote disjoint union.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Informatica, Universitá di Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Mario Bravetti

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Adrian Francalanza

  3. Institut for Datalogi, Aalborg Universitet, Aalborg, Denmark

    Iaroslav Golovanov, Hans Hüttel, Mathias S. Jakobsen & Mikkel K. Kettunen

  4. NOVA-LINCS and NOVA School of Science and Technology, Caparica, Portugal

    António Ravara

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  1. Mario Bravetti
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  2. Adrian Francalanza
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  3. Iaroslav Golovanov
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  4. Hans Hüttel
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  5. Mathias S. Jakobsen
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  6. Mikkel K. Kettunen
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  7. António Ravara
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Correspondence to António Ravara .

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  1. University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong

    Bruno C. d. S. Oliveira

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Bravetti, M. et al. (2020). Behavioural Types for Memory and Method Safety in a Core Object-Oriented Language. In: Oliveira, B.C.d.S. (eds) Programming Languages and Systems. APLAS 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12470. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64437-6_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64437-6_6

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