Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Computer Science

Supervisor

Dr. Stephen M. Watt

Abstract

In this thesis, we examine an extension to the idea of object oriented programming to make programs easier for people and compilers to understand. Often objects behave differently depending on the history of past operations as well as their input that is their behavior depends on state. We may think of the fields of an object as encoding two kinds of information: data that makes up the useful information in the object and state that controls its behavior. Object oriented languages do not distinguish these two. We propose that by specifying these two, programs become clearer for people to write and understand and easier for machines to transform and optimize.

We introduce the notion of state controlled object oriented programming, abbreviated as “SCOOP”, which encompasses explicit support of state in objects. While introducing an extension to object oriented programming, our objective is to minimize any burden on the programmer while programming with SCOOP. Static detection of the current state of an object by programming languages has been a challenge. To overcome this challenge without compromising our objective, a technique is presented that advances contemporary work.

We propose an implementation scheme for a SCOOP compiler that effectively synchronizes the external and internal representation of state of objects. As an implication of this scheme, SCOOP would provide the memento design pattern by default.

We also show how a portion of an object particular to its state can be replaced dynamically, allowing state dependent polymorphism. Further, we discuss how programs coded in SCOOP can be model checked.

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