CJO - Abstract - Featherweight generic confinement

Journal of Functional Programming (2006), 16: 793-811 Cambridge University Press

Copyright © 2006 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S0956796806006125

Published online by Cambridge University Press 14 Sep 2006

Article

Featherweight generic confinement

ALEX POTANIN ^a1, JAMES NOBLE ^a1, DAVE CLARKE ^a2 and ROBERT BIDDLE ^a3
^a1 Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (e-mail: alex@mcs.vuw.ac.nz, kjx@mcs.vuw.ac.nz)
^a2 CWI, Netherlands (e-mail: dave@cwi.nl)
^a3 Carleton University, Otttawa, Canada (e-mail: robert_biddle@carleton.ca)

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potanin a [Google Scholar]

noble j [Google Scholar]

clarke d [Google Scholar]

biddle r [Google Scholar]

Abstract

Existing approaches to object encapsulation either rely on ad hoc syntactic restrictions or require the use of specialised type systems. Syntactic restrictions are difficult to scale and to prove correct, while specialised type systems require extensive changes to programming languages. We demonstrate that confinement can be enforced cheaply in Featherweight Generic Java, with no essential change to the underlying language or type system. This result demonstrates that polymorphic type parameters can simultaneously act as ownership parameters and should facilitate the adoption of confinement and ownership type systems in general-purpose programming languages.

(Published Online September 14 2006)