Proposes a flow-sensitive, context-insensitive alias analysis in Java that is more efficient and precise than previous analyses in C++. For this, we propose a reference-set alias representation and we present the propagation rules for this representation. For the type determination, the type table is built with reference variables and with all possible types of those variables. We propose an algorithm in a popular iterative loop method with a structural traversal of a context-free grammar. Finally, we show that our reference-set representation has better performance for the alias analysis algorithm than the existing object-pair representation does.

We present a graphical environment for parallel object-oriented programming. It provides visual tools to develop and debug object-oriented programs as well as parallel or concurrent systems. This environment was derived from a structural operational semantics of an extension of the Eiffel language, Eiffel//. Object-related features of the language (inheritance, polymorphism) are formalized using a big-step semantics, while the interleaving model of concurrency is expressed with small-step semantics.Without user instrumentation, the interactive environment proposes features such as step-by-step animated executions, graphical visualization of object and process topology, futures and pending requests, control of interleaving, deadlock detection.

This article formally defines Eiffel dynamic binding in presence of renaming and redefinition. Message passing, inheritance, and polymorphism are expressed in an operational style using natural semantics. From the formal specification, we derive an algorithm to determine the appropriate version of a feature to apply to a given object. This algorithm, based only on the class hierarchy and not using any intermediate structure, gives a practical approach to the understanding of inheritance, renaming, and redefinition in Eiffel.