Immutability

Abstract

One of the main reasons aliasing has to be controlled, as highlighted in another chapter [1] of this book [2], is the possibility that a variable can unexpectedly change its value without the referrer's knowledge. This book will not be complete without a discussion of the impact of immutability on reference-abundant imperative object-oriented languages. In this chapter we briefly survey possible definitions of immutability and present recent work by the authors on adding immutability to object-oriented languages and how it impacts aliasing. Show more