The Chemical Approach to Typestate-Oriented Programming

Abstract

We introduce a novel approach to typestate-oriented programming based on the chemical metaphor: state and operations on objects are molecules of messages, and state transformations are chemical reactions. This approach allows us to investigate typestate in an inherently concurrent setting, whereby objects can be accessed and modified concurrently by several processes, each potentially changing only part of their state. We introduce a simple behavioral type theory to express in a uniform way both the private and the public interfaces of objects; describe and enforce structured object protocols consisting of possibilities, prohibitions, and obligations; and control object sharing.