Formal Semantics for Java-like Languages and Research Opportunities

The objective of this paper is twofold: first, we discuss the state of art on Java-like semantics, focusing on those that provide formal specification using operational semantics (big-step or small-step), studying in detail the most cited projects and presenting some derivative works that extend the originals aggregating useful features. Also, we filter our research for those that provide some insights in type-safety proofs. Furthermore, we provide a comparison between the most used projects in order to show which functionalities are covered in such projects. Second, our effort is focused towards the research opportunities in this area, showing some important works that can be applied to the previously presented projects to study features of object-oriented languages, and pointing for some possibilities to explore in future researches

Properties of Java Simple Closures

Abstract: In the last years, the Java community has been arguing about adding closures to Java in order to improve expressivity. The debate has not yet terminated but all proposals seem to converge towards a notion of Simple Closures which contain only the essential features of anonymous functions. This paper addresses the problem of defining a rigorous semantics for Simple Closures. The technique adopted is well known and has already been used to prove interesting properties of other extensions of Java. A minimal calculus is defined: Featherweight Java extended with Simple Closures. Syntax and semantics of such a calculus are defined and type safety, backward compatibility, and the abstraction property are prove

The Equivalence of Reduction and Translation Semantics of Java Simple Closures (Extended Version)

FGCJ is a minimal core calculus that extends Featherweight Generic Java, FGJ, with lambda expressions for Java Simple Closures. It has been introduced to study, in a reduction semantics framework, properties of Java Simple Closures, including type safety and abstraction property. F is a source-to-source, translation rule system from Java 1.5 extended with lambda expressions, back to ordinary Java 1.5. It has been introduced to study, in a translation semantics framework, the design and the implementation features of lambda expressions, including simple closures, this transparency, non local variables and relations with anonymous class objects. In this paper we prove that the reduction semantics and the translation semantics commute in FGACJ. Where FGACJ is a minimal core calculus that extends FGCJ, by adding Java interfaces and anonymous class objects and that allows a restricted definition of translation semantics F

The Equivalence of Reduction and Translation Semantics of Java Simple Closures

FGCJ is a minimal core calculus that extends Featherweight Generic Java, FGJ, with lambda expressions for Java Simple Closures. It has been introduced to study, in a reduction semantics framework, properties of Java Simple Closures, including type safety and abstraction property. F is a source-to-source, translation rule system from Java 1.5 extended with lambda expressions, back to ordinary Java 1.5. It has been introduced to study, in a translation semantics framework, the design and the implementation features of lambda expressions, including simple closures, this transparency, non local variables and relations with anonymous class objects. In this paper we prove that the reduction semantics and the translation semantics commute in FGACJ. Where FGACJ is a minimal core calculus that extends FGCJ, by adding Java interfaces and anonymous class objects and that allows a restricted definition of translation semantics F