Iterators can be Independent ``from'' Their Collections

by John Boyland, William Retert, and Yang Zhao.

Abstract

External iterators pose problems for alias control mechanisms: they have access to collection interals and yet are not accessible from the collection; they may be used in contexts that are unaware of the collection. And yet iterators can benefit from alias control because iterators may fail ``unexpectedly'' when their collections are modified. We explain a novel aliasing annotation ``from'' that indicates when a collection intends to delegate its access to internals to a new object and how it can be given semantics using a fractional permission system. We sketch how a static analysis using permissions can statically detect possible concurrent modification exceptions.

BibTeX Style Reference

@inproceedings(boyland/retert/zhao:07iterators,
  title = {Iterators can be Independent ``from'' Their Collections},
  author =      {John Boyland and William Retert and Yang Zhao},
  booktitle = 	{ECOOP 2007 Workshop on Aliasing, Confinement and Ownership in object-oriented programming},
  editor = 	{Tobias Wrigstad},
  month = 	jul,
  year = 	2007,
  nothing =	{})

How to Get a Copy

The PDF is available here. The slides for the presentation will be made available later.

Apology

My apologies to those who know that grammatically the title should be ``Iterators can be independent of their collections.'' The title as stated includes a pun.

Last Modified: May 12, 2008