Closure Joinpoints: Block Joinpoints without Surprises Eric Bodden Software Technology Group, Technische Universität Darmstadt Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt (CASED)
[email protected] ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION Block joinpoints allow programmers to explicitly mark re- In this work, we introduce Closure Joinpoints for As- gions of base code as \to be advised", thus avoiding the need pectJ [6], a mechanism that allows programmers to explicitly to extract the block into a method just for the sake of cre- mark any Java expression or sequence of statement as \to ating a joinpoint. Block joinpoints appear simple to define be advised". Closure Joinpoints are explicit joinpoints that and implement. After all, regular block statements in Java- resemble labeled, instantly called closures, i.e., anonymous like languages are constructs well-known to the programmer inner functions with access to their declaring lexical scope. and have simple control-flow and data-flow semantics. As an example, consider the code in Figure1, adopted Our major insight is, however, that by exposing a block from Hoffman's work on explicit joinpoints [24]. The pro- of code as a joinpoint, the code is no longer only called in grammer marked the statements of lines4{8, with a closure its declaring static context but also from within aspect code. to be \exhibited" as a joinpoint Transaction so that these The block effectively becomes a closure, i.e., an anonymous statements can be advised through aspects. Closure Join- function that may capture values from the enclosing lexical points are no first-class objects, i.e., they cannot be assigned scope.