An attribute-grammar framework for specifying the accessibility in Java programs

Authors:
Jien-Tsai Chan;Wuu Yang
Affiliations:
Department of Computer and Information Science, National Chiao Tung University, PO Box 25-75, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan, ROC;Department of Computer and Information Science, National Chiao Tung University, PO Box 25-75, Hsinchu 300, Taiwan, ROC
Venue:
Computer Languages, Systems and Structures
Year:
2002

Citing 10
Cited 1

Translation of attribute grammars into procedures

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
Lifetime analysis for attributes

Acta Informatica
Modular attribute grammars

The Computer Journal - Special issue on procedural programming
Attribute storage optimization by stacks

Acta Informatica
Eli: a complete, flexible compiler construction system

Communications of the ACM
Composable attribute grammars: support for modularity in translator design and implementation

POPL '92 Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
Performance specification using attributed grammars

DAC '93 Proceedings of the 30th international Design Automation Conference
Modularity and reusability in attribute grammars

Acta Informatica
Attribute grammar paradigms—a high-level methodology in language implementation

ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Conditional attribute grammars

ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)

Traps in Java

Journal of Systems and Software

Quantified Score

Hi-index	0.00

Visualization

Abstract

The three access modifiers-public, protected, and private-control the accessibility of the members of a type in the Java programming language. Furthermore, the accessibility may be transmitted along the two structures-package structure and inheritance structure. It is difficult to identify the weaknesses of the access modifiers from the informal semantics stated in the language manual. We develop a formal framework for specifying the accessibility in Java programs based on attribute grammars. With the help of this framework, we found several situations in the language specification that are irregular or counter-intuitive or ambiguous. These situations may confuse the programmers and hence may create weaknesses in Java programs.