Separation and information hiding

  • Authors:
  • Peter W. O'Hearn;Hongseok Yang;John C. Reynolds

  • Affiliations:
  • Queen Mary, University of London;Queen Mary, University of London;Carnegie Mellon University

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

We investigate proof rules for information hiding, using the formalism of separation logic. In essence, we use the separating conjunction to partition the internal resources of a module from those accessed by the module's clients. The use of a logical connective gives rise to a form of dynamic partitioning, where we track the transfer of ownership of portions of heap storage between program components. It also enables us to enforce separation in the presence of mutable data structures with embedded addresses that may be aliased.