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Specification and verification of object-oriented programs using supertype abstraction

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Abstract

We present a formal specification language and a formal verification logic for a simple object-oriented programming language. The language is applicative and statically typed, and supports subtyping and message-passing. The verification logic relies on a behavioral notion of subtyping that captures the intuition that a subtype behaves like its supertypes. We give a formal definition for legal subtype relations, based on the specified behavior of objects, and show that this definition is sufficient to ensure the soundness of the verification logic. The verification logic reflects the way programmers reason informally about object-oriented programs, in that it allows them to use static type information, which avoids the need to consider all possible run-time subtypes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, Iowa State University, 229 Atanasoff Hall, 50011-1040, Ames, IA, USA

    Gary T. Leavens

  2. Laboratory for Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 545 Technology Square, 02139, Cambridge, MA, USA

    William E. Weihl

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  1. Gary T. Leavens
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  2. William E. Weihl
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The work of both authors was supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant CCR-8716884, and in part by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under Contract N00014-89-J-1988. While a graduate student at MIT, Leavens was also supported in part by a GenRad/AEA Faculty Development Fellowship, and at ISU he has been partially supported by the ISU Achievement Foundation and by the National Science Foundation under Grant CCR-9108654

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Leavens, G.T., Weihl, W.E. Specification and verification of object-oriented programs using supertype abstraction. Acta Informatica 32, 705–778 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01178658

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