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Immutability

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Aliasing in Object-Oriented Programming. Types, Analysis and Verification

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 7850))

Abstract

One of the main reasons aliasing has to be controlled, as highlighted in another chapter [1] of this book [2], is the possibility that a variable can unexpectedly change its value without the referrer’s knowledge. This book will not be complete without a discussion of the impact of immutability on reference-abundant imperative object-oriented languages. In this chapter we briefly survey possible definitions of immutability and present recent work by the authors on adding immutability to object-oriented languages and how it impacts aliasing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Computer Science, VUW, Wellington, New Zealand

    Alex Potanin

  2. Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Johan Östlund

  3. Google, New York, NY, USA

    Yoav Zibin

  4. Computer Science and Engineering, University of Washington, WA, USA

    Michael D. Ernst

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  1. Alex Potanin
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  2. Johan Östlund
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  3. Yoav Zibin
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  4. Michael D. Ernst
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Celestijnenlaan 200A, 3001, Heverlee, Belgium

    Dave Clarke

  2. School of Engineering and Computer Science, Victoria University of Wellington, Cottn Building, Gate 6, Kelburn Parade, 6140, Wellington, New Zealand

    James Noble

  3. Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University, Lägerhyddsvägen 2, 75237, Uppsala, Sweden

    Tobias Wrigstad

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Potanin, A., Östlund, J., Zibin, Y., Ernst, M.D. (2013). Immutability. In: Clarke, D., Noble, J., Wrigstad, T. (eds) Aliasing in Object-Oriented Programming. Types, Analysis and Verification. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7850. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36946-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-36946-9_9

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