Typing for a minimal aspect language: preliminary report

Abstract

We present a preliminary report on typing systems for polyadic μABC, aspect oriented programming---pointcuts and advice---and nothing else. Tuples of uninterpreted names are used to trigger advice. The resulting language is remarkably unstructured: the least common denominator of the pi-calculus and Linda. As such, developing meaningful type systems is a substantial challenge. Our work is guided by the translation of richly typed languages into μABC, specifically function- and class-based languages augmented with advice. The "impedance mismatch" between source and target is severe, and this leads us to a novel treatment of types in μABC.