DROPS

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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.5

Behavioural Up/down Casting For Statically Typed Languages

Authors: Lorenzo Bacchiani, Mario Bravetti, Marco Giunti, João Mota, and António Ravara

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

Abstract

We provide support for polymorphism in static typestate analysis for object-oriented languages with upcasts and downcasts. Recent work has shown how typestate analysis can be embedded in the development of Java programs to obtain safer behaviour at runtime, e.g., absence of null pointer errors and protocol completion. In that approach, inheritance is supported at the price of limiting casts in source code, thus only allowing those at the beginning of the protocol, i.e., immediately after objects creation, or at the end, and in turn seriously affecting the applicability of the analysis. In this paper, we provide a solution to this open problem in typestate analysis by introducing a theory based on a richer data structure, named typestate tree, which supports upcast and downcast operations at any point of the protocol by leveraging union and intersection types. The soundness of the typestate tree-based approach has been mechanised in Coq. The theory can be applied to most object-oriented languages statically analysable through typestates, thus opening new scenarios for acceptance of programs exploiting inheritance and casting. To defend this thesis, we show an application of the theory, by embedding the typestate tree mechanism in a Java-like object-oriented language, and proving its soundness.

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Lorenzo Bacchiani, Mario Bravetti, Marco Giunti, João Mota, and António Ravara. Behavioural Up/down Casting For Statically Typed Languages. In 38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 313, pp. 5:1-5:28, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{bacchiani_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.5,
  author =	{Bacchiani, Lorenzo and Bravetti, Mario and Giunti, Marco and Mota, Jo\~{a}o and Ravara, Ant\'{o}nio},
  title =	{{Behavioural Up/down Casting For Statically Typed Languages}},
  booktitle =	{38th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2024)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:28},
  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.2024.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-208543},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2024.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Behavioural types, object-oriented programming, subtyping, cast, typestates}
}

Document

Experience Paper

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.40

On Using VeriFast, VerCors, Plural, and KeY to Check Object Usage (Experience Paper)

Authors: João Mota, Marco Giunti, and António Ravara

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 263, 37th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2023)

Abstract

Typestates are a notion of behavioral types that describe protocols for stateful objects, specifying the available methods for each state. Ensuring methods are called in the correct order (protocol compliance), and that, if and when the program terminates, all objects are in the final state (protocol completion) is crucial to write better and safer programs. Objects of this kind are commonly shared among different clients or stored in collections, which may also be shared. However, statically checking protocol compliance and completion when objects are shared is challenging. To evaluate the support given by state of the art verification tools in checking the correct use of shared objects with protocol, we present a survey on four tools for Java: VeriFast, VerCors, Plural, and KeY. We describe the implementation of a file reader, linked-list, and iterator, check for each tool its ability to statically guarantee protocol compliance and completion, even when objects are shared in collections, and evaluate the programmer’s effort in making the code acceptable to these tools. With this study, we motivate the need for lightweight methods to verify the presented kinds of programs.

Cite as

João Mota, Marco Giunti, and António Ravara. On Using VeriFast, VerCors, Plural, and KeY to Check Object Usage (Experience Paper). In 37th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 263, pp. 40:1-40:29, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{mota_et_al:LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.40,
  author =	{Mota, Jo\~{a}o and Giunti, Marco and Ravara, Ant\'{o}nio},
  title =	{{On Using VeriFast, VerCors, Plural, and KeY to Check Object Usage}},
  booktitle =	{37th European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming (ECOOP 2023)},
  pages =	{40:1--40:29},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-281-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{263},
  editor =	{Ali, Karim 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.2023.40},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-182330},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ECOOP.2023.40},
  annote =	{Keywords: Java, Typestates, VeriFast, VerCors, Plural, KeY}
}

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Documents authored by Ravara, António

Behavioural Up/down Casting For Statically Typed Languages

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On Using VeriFast, VerCors, Plural, and KeY to Check Object Usage (Experience Paper)

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