Defining Name Accessibility using Scope Graphs (Extended Edition)
<|reference_start|>Defining Name Accessibility using Scope Graphs (Extended Edition): Many programming languages allow programmers to regulate accessibility; i.e., annotating a declaration with keywords such as export and private to indicate where it can be accessed. Despite the importance of name accessibility for, e.g., compilers, editor auto-completion and tooling, and automated refactorings, few existing type systems provide a formal account of name accessibility.   We present a declarative, executable, and language-parametric model for name accessibility, which provides a formal specification of name accessibility in Java, C#, C++, Rust, and Eiffel. We achieve this by defining name accessibility as a predicate on resolution paths through scope graphs. Since scope graphs are a language-independent model of name resolution, our model provides a uniform approach to defining different accessibility policies for different languages.   Our model is implemented in Statix, a logic language for executable type system specification using scope graphs. We evaluate its correctness on a test suite that compares it with the C#, Java, and Rust compilers, and show we can synthesize access modifiers in programs with holes accurately.<|reference_end|>
@article{zwaan2024defining,
    title={Defining Name Accessibility using Scope Graphs (Extended Edition)},
    author={Aron Zwaan, Casper Bach Poulsen},
    journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.09320},
    year={2024},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    eprint={2407.09320},
    primaryClass={cs.PL}
}