Welterweight Java

This paper presents Welterweight Java (WJ), a new minimal core Java calculus intended to be a suitable starting point for investigations in the semantics of Java-like programs. To this end, WJ adds a few extra pounds to Featherweight Java. WJ is imperative and stateful, which is a frequent extension of Featherweight Java. To account for the importance of concurrency, WJ models Java’s thread-based concurrency and lock-based synchronisation. The design of WJ is distilled from recent work on concurrent Java-like systems. We believe that the calculus is a good starting point for extensions. We illustrate the potential of the calculus with a version of WJ extended with deep ownership. This serves two purposes—it is a minimal formalisation of ownership, interesting in its own right, and shows how easily WJ can be extended.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2010
• Where: TOOLS
• Authors: Johan Östlund, Tobias Wrigstad
• Keywords: Core Java Calculus, Featherweight Java, Programming Languages, TOOLS 2010, Wj Models Java