Extending type systems in a library: Type-safe XML processing in C++

Type systems built directly into the compiler or interpreter of a programming language cannot be easily extended to keep track of run-time invariants of new abstractions. Yet, programming with domain-specific abstractions could benefit from additional static checking. This paper presents library tec...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science of computer programming 2011-04, Vol.76 (4), p.290-306
Main Authors: Solodkyy, Yuriy, Järvi, Jaakko
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Active libraries
C++
Template metaprogramming
Type qualifiers
Type systems
XML
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Summary:Type systems built directly into the compiler or interpreter of a programming language cannot be easily extended to keep track of run-time invariants of new abstractions. Yet, programming with domain-specific abstractions could benefit from additional static checking. This paper presents library techniques for extending the type system of C++ to support domain-specific abstractions. The main contribution is a programmable “subtype” relation. As a demonstration of the techniques, we implement a type system for defining type qualifiers in C++, as well as a type system for the XML processing language, capable of, e.g., statically guaranteeing that a program only produces valid XML documents according to a given XML schema. ► Metaprogramming capabilities of C++ enable domain-specific type system extensions. ► A template library for building new type system extensions. ► Type system extensions for type qualifiers. ► Type system extensions for regular expression types for typing XML.
ISSN:0167-6423
1872-7964
DOI:10.1016/j.scico.2010.09.004