Coinductive subtyping for abstract compilation of object-oriented languages into Horn formulas

In recent work we have shown how it is possible to define very precise type systems for object-oriented languages by abstractly compiling a program into a Horn formula f. Then type inference amounts to resolving a certain goal w.r.t. the coinductive (that is, the greatest) Herbrand model of f. Type systems defined in this way are idealized, since in the most interesting instantiations both the terms of the coinductive Herbrand universe and goal derivations cannot be finitely represented. However, sound and quite expressive approximations can be implemented by considering only regular terms and derivations. In doing so, it is essential to introduce a proper subtyping relation formalizing the notion of approximation between types. In this paper we study a subtyping relation on coinductive terms built on union and object type constructors. We define an interpretation of types as set of values induced by a quite intuitive relation of membership of values to types, and prove that the definition of subtyping is sound w.r.t. subset inclusion between type interpretations. The proof of soundness has allowed us to simplify the notion of contractive derivation and to discover that the previously given definition of subtyping did not cover all possible representations of the empty type

An extensible constraint-based type inference algorithm for object-oriented dynamic languages supporting blocks and generic types

International Workshop on Smalltalk TechnologiesInternational audienceDynamically typed languages promote flexibility and agile programming. Still, their lack of type information hampers program understanding and limits the possibilities of programming tools such as automatic refactorings, automated testing framework, and program navigation. In this paper we present an extensible constraint-based type inference algorithm for object-oriented dynamic languages, focused on providing type information which is useful for programming tools. The algorithm is able to infer types for small industrial-like programs, including advanced features like blocks and generic types. Although it is still an early version, its highly extensible and configurable structure make our solution a useful test bench for further investigation

Declassification: transforming java programs to remove intermediate classes

Computer applications are increasingly being written in object-oriented languages like Java and C++ Object-onented programming encourages the use of small methods and classes. However, this style of programming introduces much overhead as each method call results in a dynamic dispatch and each field access becomes a pointer dereference to the heap allocated object. Many of the classes in these programs are included to provide structure rather than to act as reusable code, and can therefore be regarded as intermediate. We have therefore developed an optimisation technique, called declassification, which will transform Java programs into equivalent programs from which these intermediate classes have been removed. The optimisation technique developed involves two phases, analysis and transformation. The analysis involves the identification of intermediate classes for removal. A suitable class is defined to be a class which is used exactly once within a program. Such classes are identified by this analysis The subsequent transformation involves eliminating these intermediate classes from the program. This involves inlinmg the fields and methods of each intermediate class within the enclosing class which uses it. In theory, declassification reduces the number of classes which are instantiated and used in a program during its execution. This should reduce the overhead of object creation and maintenance as child objects are no longer created, and it should also reduce the number of field accesses and dynamic dispatches required by a program to execute. An important feature of the declassification technique, as opposed to other similar techniques, is that it guarantees there will be no increase in code size. An empirical study was conducted on a number of reasonable-sized Java programs and it was found that very few suitable classes were identified for miming. The results showed that the declassification technique had a small influence on the memory consumption and a negligible influence on the run-time performance of these programs. It is therefore concluded that the declassification technique was not successful in optimizing the test programs but further extensions to this technique combined with an intrinsically object-onented set of test programs could greatly improve its success

Parameterized Object Sensitivity for Points-to Analysis for Java

The goal of points-to analysis for Java is to determine the set of objects pointed to by a reference variable or a reference object field. We present object sensitivity, a new form of context sensitivity for flow-insensitive points-to analysis for Java. The key idea of our approach is to analyze a method separately for each of the object names that represent runtime objects on which this method may be invoked. To ensure flexibility and practicality, we propose a parameterization framework that allows analysis designers to control the tradeo#s between cost and precision in the object-sensitive analysis

Inferring useful static types for duck typed languages

Complete and precise identification of types is essential to the effectiveness of programming aids such as refactoring or code completion. Existing approaches that target dynamically typed languages infer types using flow analysis, but flow analysis does not cope well with heavily used features such as heterogeneous containers and implicit interfaces. Our solution makes the assumption that programs that are known to work do not encounter run-time type errors which allows us to derive extra type information from the way values are used, rather than simply where those values originate. This is in keeping with the “duck typing” philosophy of many dynamically typed languages. The information we derive must be conservative, so we describe and formalise a technique to ‘freeze’ the duck type of a variable using the features, such as named methods, that are provably present on any run of the program. Development environments can use these sets of features to provide code-completion suggestions and API documentation, amongst other things. We show that these sets of features can be used to refine imprecise flow analysis results by using the frozen duck type to perform a structural type-cast. We first formalise this for an idealised duck-typed language semantics and then show to what extent the technique would work for a real-world language, Python. We demonstrate its effectiveness by performing an analysis of several real-world Python programs which shows that we can infer the types of method-call receivers more precisely than can flow analysis alone

Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Principles and Practices of Programming in Java

This book contains the proceedings of the 4th international conference on principles and practices of programming in Java. The conference focuses on the different aspects of the Java programming language and its applications

Making Type Inference Practical

We present the implementation of a type inference algorithm for untyped objectoriented programs with inheritance, assignments, and late binding. The algorithm significantly improves our previous one, presented at OOPSLA'91, since it can handle collection classes, such as List, in a useful way. Also, the complexity has been dramatically improved, from exponential time to low polynomial time. The implementation uses the techniques of incremental graph construction and constraint template instantiation to avoid representing intermediate results, doing superfluous work, and recomputing type information. Experiments indicate that the implementation type checks as much as 100 lines pr. second. This results in a mature product, on which a number of tools can be based, for example a safety tool, an image compression tool, a code optimization tool, and an annotation tool. This may make type inference for object-oriented languages practical