Departmental Papers (CIS)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
May 2008
Abstract
This paper defines AspectML, a typed functional, aspect-oriented programming language. The main contribution of AspectML is the seamless integration of polymorphism, run-time type analysis and aspect-oriented programming language features. In particular, AspectML allows programmers to define type-safe polymorphic advice using pointcuts constructed from a collection of polymorphic join points. AspectML also comes equipped with a type inference algorithm that conservatively extends Hindley-Milner type inference. To support first-class polymorphic point-cut designators, a crucial feature for developing aspect-oriented profiling or logging libraries, the algorithm blends the conventional Hindley-Milner type inference algorithm with a simple form of local type inference. We give our language operational meaning via a type-directed translation into an expressive type-safe intermediate language. Many complexities of the source language are eliminated in this translation, leading to a modular specification of its semantics. One of the novelties of the intermediate language is the definition of polymorphic labels for marking control-flow points. When a set of labels is assembled as a pointcut, the type of each label is an instance of the type of the pointcut.
Keywords
design, languages, security, theory, aspect-oriented programming, functional languages, parametric and ad-hoc polymorphism, type systems, type inference
Date Posted: 16 July 2008
This document has been peer reviewed.
Comments
Postprint version. Published in ACM Transactions on Programming and Languages, Volume 30, Issue 3, Article No. 14, May 2008. Publisher URL: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1353445.1353448