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Documents authored by Kinsbruner, Elad

Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.22
Constrictor: Immutability as a Design Concept

Authors: Elad Kinsbruner, Shachar Itzhaky, and Hila Peleg

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 313, 38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024)

Abstract
Many object-oriented applications in algorithm design rely on objects never changing during their lifetime. This is often tackled by marking object references as read-only, e.g., using the const keyword in C++. In other languages like Python or Java where such a concept does not exist, programmers rely on best practices that are entirely unenforced. While reliance on best practices is obviously too permissive, const-checking is too restrictive: it is possible for a method to mutate the internal state while still satisfying the property we expect from an "immutable" object in this setting. We would therefore like to enforce the immutability of an object’s abstract state. We check an object’s immutability through a view of its abstract state: for instances of an immutable class, the view does not change when running any of the class’s methods, even if some of the internal state does change. If all methods of a class are verified as non-mutating, we can deem the entire class view-immutable. We present an SMT-based algorithm to check view-immutability, and implement it in our linter/verifier, Constrictor. We evaluate Constrictor on 51 examples of immutability-related design violations. Our evaluation shows that Constrictor is effective at catching a variety of prototypical design violations, and does so in seconds. We also explore Constrictor with two real-world case studies.
Cite as

Elad Kinsbruner, Shachar Itzhaky, and Hila Peleg. Constrictor: Immutability as a Design Concept. In 38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 313, pp. 22:1-22:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{kinsbruner_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.22,
  author =	{Kinsbruner, Elad and Itzhaky, Shachar and Peleg, Hila},
  title =	{{Constrictor: Immutability as a Design Concept}},
  booktitle =	{38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024)},
  pages =	{22:1--22:29},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-341-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{313},
  editor =	{Aldrich, Jonathan and Salvaneschi, Guido},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.22},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-208715},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.22},
  annote =	{Keywords: Immutability, Design Enforcement, SMT, Liskov Substitution Principle, Object-oriented Programming}
}
Document
Artifact
DOI: 10.4230/DARTS.10.2.9
Constrictor: Immutability as a Design Concept (Artifact)

Authors: Elad Kinsbruner, Shachar Itzhaky, and Hila Peleg

Published in: DARTS, Volume 10, Issue 2, Special Issue of the 38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024)

Abstract
Many object-oriented applications in algorithm design rely on objects never changing during their lifetime. This is often tackled by marking object references as read-only, e.g., using the const keyword in C++. In other languages like Python or Java where such a concept does not exist, programmers rely on best practices that are entirely unenforced. While reliance on best practices is obviously too permissive, const-checking is too restrictive: it is possible for a method to mutate the internal state while still satisfying the property we expect from an "immutable" object in this setting. We would therefore like to enforce the immutability of an object’s abstract state. We check an object’s immutability through a view of its abstract state: for instances of an immutable class, the view does not change when running any of the class’s methods, even if some of the internal state does change. If all methods of a class are verified as non-mutating, we can deem the entire class view-immutable. We present an SMT-based algorithm to check view-immutability, and implement it in our linter/verifier, Constrictor. We evaluate Constrictor on 51 examples of immutability-related design violations. Our evaluation shows that Constrictor is effective at catching a variety of prototypical design violations, and does so in seconds. We also explore Constrictor with two real-world case studies.
Cite as

Elad Kinsbruner, Shachar Itzhaky, and Hila Peleg. Constrictor: Immutability as a Design Concept (Artifact). In Special Issue of the 38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024). Dagstuhl Artifacts Series (DARTS), Volume 10, Issue 2, pp. 9:1-9:4, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@Article{kinsbruner_et_al:DARTS.10.2.9,
  author =	{Kinsbruner, Elad and Itzhaky, Shachar and Peleg, Hila},
  title =	{{Constrictor: Immutability as a Design Concept (Artifact)}},
  pages =	{9:1--9:4},
  journal =	{Dagstuhl Artifacts Series},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-342-3},
  ISSN =	{2509-8195},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{10},
  number =	{2},
  editor =	{Kinsbruner, Elad and Itzhaky, Shachar and Peleg, Hila},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/DARTS.10.2.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-209071},
  doi =		{10.4230/DARTS.10.2.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: Immutability, Design Enforcement, SMT, Liskov Substitution Principle, Object-oriented Programming}
}
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