Idea for Language Extensions for Interface-Protocols, was Re: Automatic Resource Management and Simple Resource Clean-up (original) (raw)
Thorsten van Ellen thorsten at vanellen.de
Wed Mar 4 12:09:35 PST 2009
- Previous message: Automatic Resource Management and Simple Resource Clean-up
- Next message: PROPOSAL: Static Methods in Interfaces
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]
By the way:
- allocate - deallocate
- open - close
- begin - commit/rollback
- lock - unlock
- push - push - pop - pop and so on, all have somthing in common and that is:
a protocol on top of the signature.
Expressing protocols for interfaces might be a great language feature and solving many more bugs caused by misused interfaces than only misused resources.
But surely it is a complex feature. Protocols itself could be expressed with their own languages, e.g., simple regular expressions or even more complex expressions.
Languages that can be evaluated at compile time, e.g., for simple cases like "open - close" and languages that have to trace a state to be evaluated at runtime, e.g., "push - push - pop - pop". Compile time mechanisms can not easily be developed by individuals. Runtime mechanisms could be developed individually without language extensions but need effort for every single case. Language extensions like regular expressions could solve the problem generally with one runtime mechanism.
Some of them could also be expressed by design by contract which is also a complex feature probably even more complex, but that only works at runtime and does not find errors at compile time.
It is only one idea, no proposal, probably too complex for this project and therefore offtopic.
Best regards
Thorsten van Ellen
- Previous message: Automatic Resource Management and Simple Resource Clean-up
- Next message: PROPOSAL: Static Methods in Interfaces
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]