Guard-based auditing

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This is a new design for auditing in E. It is an alternative to the unshadowable-names/synEnv system currently implemented in E-on-Java, and the give-the-auditor-access-to-everything currently in E-on-CL.

Contents

Basic implementation

Environments holding an optGuard along with each binding. For each noun, the scope alleges that the corresponding slot (not slot value!) was returned from that guard (except for object expressions; see below).

As a consequence of this, environments must not be Selfless, since it is not necessarily possible to go from some product of a guard to a value it coerces to the same result. They may be PassByConstruction, however.

(Note that FinalPatterns and VarPatterns must get FinalSlot and VarSlot guards; e.g. def x :int := 1 has a guard-in-environment of FinalSlot[int].)

Environments gain the method fetchGuard/2, similar to fetchSlot/2.

Auditions have one relevant method, getGuard/1. Given a noun (string), it returns the environment's optGuard for that binding. (XXX seems to be some optional/required confusion here. Does this return null, or does it return 'any'? --Kevin Reid 08:58, 19 February 2008 (CST)) If the noun is not one of the free variables of the audition's object expression, or if the audit has already terminated, then an exception is thrown.

An additional component on kernel ObjectExprs: the "as" clause, syntactically preceding the "implements", behaves like it but with the additional effect of making its value be the guard for the binding of the object name (without coercing the object). That is, def x as Y {} audits x with Y, and also causes the binding to be ("x", makeFinalSlot(<x>), FinalSlot[Y]).

All bindings in the safeScope expose their values in their guards; that is, they are ("foo", bar, FinalSlot[Same[bar]]).

Implications for auditors

Implications for guards

Open questions

If environments are PassByConstruction, then, if a passed guard coerces some slot to a different slot upon unserialization, should the binding have the coerced value (i.e. now coerced twice), or should the binding forget the guard?

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