TR-2006-10
Operational Semantics for Multi-Language Programs
Jacob Matthews; Robby Findler. 26 October, 2006.
Communicated by Robby Findler.
Abstract
Inter-language interoperability is big business, as the success of Microsoft’s .NET and COM and Sun’s JVM show. Programming language designers are designing programming languages that reflect that fact — SML#, Mondrian, and Scala, to name just a few examples, all treat interoperability with other languages as a central design feature. Still, current multi-language research tends not to focus on the semantics of interoperation features, but only on how to implement them efficiently. In this paper, we take first steps toward higher-level models of interoperating systems. Our technique abstracts away the low-level details of interoperability like garbage collection and representation coherence, and lets us focus on semantic properties like type-safety and observable equivalence.Beyond giving simple expressive models that are natural compositions of single-language models, our studies have uncovered several interesting facts about interoperability. For example, higher-order contracts naturally emerge as the glue to ensure that inter-operating languages respect each other’s type systems. While we present our results in an abstract setting, they shed light on real multi-language systems and tools such as the JNI, SWIG, and Haskell’s stable pointers.
Original Document
The original document is available in PDF (uploaded 27 October, 2006 by Robby Findler).
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