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Confined types in Java
Author(s) -
Vitek Jan,
Bokowski Boris
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
software: practice and experience
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.437
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1097-024X
pISSN - 0038-0644
DOI - 10.1002/spe.369
Subject(s) - computer science , java , code reuse , reuse , programming language , modular design , static analysis , object oriented programming , software engineering , software , engineering , waste management
The sharing and transfer of references in object‐oriented languages is difficult to control. Without any constraint, practical experience has shown that even carefully engineered object‐oriented code can be brittle, and subtle security deficiencies can go unnoticed. In this paper, we present inexpensive syntactic constraints that strengthen encapsulation by imposing static restrictions on the spread of references. In particular, we introduce confined types to impose a static scoping discipline on dynamic references and anonymous methods to loosen confinement somewhat to allow code reuse. We have implemented a verifier which performs a modular analysis of Java programs and provides a static guarantee that confinement is respected. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.