Connecting Effects and Uniqueness with Adoption

by John Boyland.

See also the updated paper of the same title, submitted to POPL 2005.

Abstract

In a previous paper, we discussed how the concepts of uniqueness and effects are interdependent. In this paper, we show how "Adoption and Focus,"[Fahndrich&Deline, PLDI 2002] a proposal for handling linear pointers in shared variables can be extended to connect the two concepts. Our innovations include the ability to define adoption relations between individual fields rather than whole objects, and the ability to "focus" on more than one adoptee at a time. The resulting system uses recursive alias types, "permission closures" and "conditional permissions." Then we show how previously proposed effect and uniqueness annotations can be represented in the type system.

BibTeX Style Reference

@inproceedings(boyland:03connecting,
  author =      {John Boyland},
  title =       {Connecting Effects and Uniqueness with Adoption}
  booktitle = 	{Informal Proceedings of ``International Workshop on Aliasing, 
	         Confinement and Ownership in object-oriented programming''},
  year = 	2003,
  publisher =   {Utrecht University},
  nothing =	{})

How to Get a Copy

A Postscript preprint (or PDF) is also available here. The slides for the presentation are also available.

Last Modified: July 16, 2004