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Machine-Checking the Java Specification: Proving Type-Safety

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Formal Syntax and Semantics of Java

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 1523))

Abstract

In this article we present Bali, the formalization of a large (hitherto sequential) sublanguage of Java. We give its abstract syntax, type system, well-formedness conditions, and an operational evaluation semantics. Based on these definitions, we can express soundness of the type system, an important design goal claimed to be reached by the designers of Java, and prove that Bali is indeed type-safe.

All definitions and proofs have been done formally in the theorem prover Isabelle/HOL. Thus this article demonstrates that machine-checking the design of non-trivial programming languages has become a reality.

This is a completely revised and extended version of [NO98].

Research supported by DFG SPP Deduktion.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. FakultÄt für Informatik, Technische UniversitÄt München, Germany

    David von Oheimb & Tobias Nipkow

Authors
  1. David von Oheimb
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  2. Tobias Nipkow
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Secure and Dependable Software, University of Idaho, Moscow, ID, 83844-1010, USA

    Jim Alves-Foss

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© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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von Oheimb, D., Nipkow, T. (1999). Machine-Checking the Java Specification: Proving Type-Safety. In: Alves-Foss, J. (eds) Formal Syntax and Semantics of Java. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1523. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48737-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-48737-9_4

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66158-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-48737-1

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