Environments: a flexible binding mechanism to support system evolution

Author

Dearle, Alan

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., St. Andrews Univ., Fife, UK

Volume

2

fYear

1989

fDate

3-6 Jan 1989

Firstpage

46

Abstract

A language construct called `environment´ is introduced. Environments are collections of bindings and have first class data rights. As such, they provide the programmer with a type-secure mechanism to control bindings in the system. It is shown that environments can be combined to provide a naming graph that subsumes the functions of file systems in traditional operating systems. Such a mechanism provides a conceptually simple framework for manipulating bindings that permits the control of complexity and system evolution from within a unified language framework

Keywords

data structures; high level languages; software tools; complexity; environments; file systems; first class data rights; flexible binding mechanism; language construct; naming graph; operating systems; system evolution; type-secure mechanism; unified language framework; Assembly; Computer languages; Control systems; Displays; File systems; Operating systems; Programming profession; Tree data structures; Tree graphs;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

System Sciences, 1989. Vol.II: Software Track, Proceedings of the Twenty-Second Annual Hawaii International Conference on

Conference_Location

Kailua-Kona, HI

Print_ISBN

0-8186-1912-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/HICSS.1989.48058

Filename

48058