Type-Directed Weaving of Aspects for Higher-order Functional Languages

Abstract

Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) has been shown to be a useful model for software development. Special care must be taken when we try to adapt AOP to strongly typed functional languages which come with features like a type inference mechanism, polymorphic types, higher-order functions and type-scoped pointcuts. Our main contribution lies in a seamless integration of these two paradigms through a static weaving process which deals with around advices with type-scoped pointcuts in the presence of higher-order functions. We give a source-level type inference system for a higher-order, polymorphic language coupled with type-scoped pointcuts. The type system ensures that base programs are oblivious to the type of around advices. We present a type-directed translation scheme which resolves all advice applications at static time. The translation removes advice declarations from source programs and produces translated code which is typable in the Hindley-Milner system