Title
Handles: Behavior-propagating first class references for dynamically-typed languages.
Abstract
Controlling object graphs and giving specific semantics to references (such as read-only, ownership, scoped sharing) have been the focus of a large body of research in the context of static type systems. Controlling references to single objects and to graphs of objects is essential to build more secure systems, but is notoriously hard to achieve in the absence of static type systems. In this article we embrace this challenge by proposing a solution to the following question: What is an underlying mechanism that can support the definition of properties (such as revocable, read-only, lent) at the reference level in the absence of a static type system? We present handles: first-class references that propagate behavioral change dynamically to the object subgraph during program execution. In this article we describe handles and show how handles support the implementation of read-only references and revocable references. Handles have been fully implemented by modifying an existing virtual machine and we report their costs.
Year
DOI
Venue
2015
10.1016/j.scico.2014.07.011
Science of Computer Programming
Keywords
DocType
Volume
Security,Dynamic language,First class references,Language design
Journal
98
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0167-6423
0
0.34
References 
Authors
21
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Jean-Baptiste Arnaud1120.89
Stéphane Ducasse23418243.15
Marcus Denker328523.94
Camille Teruel400.68