Summary: A logic of object­oriented programs
Mart'in Abadi and K. Rustan M. Leino
Systems Research Center
Digital Equipment Corporation
fma,rustang@pa.dec.com
Abstract. We develop a logic for reasoning about object­oriented pro­
grams. The logic is for a language with an imperative semantics and
aliasing, and accounts for self­reference in objects. It is much like a type
system for objects with subtyping, but our specifications go further than
types in detailing pre­ and postconditions. We intend the logic as an
analogue of Hoare logic for object­oriented programs. Our main techni­
cal result is a soundness theorem that relates the logic to a standard
operational semantics.
1 Introduction
In the realm of procedural programming, Floyd and Hoare defined two of the
first logics of programs [Flo67, Hoa69]; many later formalisms and systems built
on their ideas, and addressed difficult questions of concurrency and data ab­
straction, for example. An analogous development has not taken place in object­
oriented programming. Although there is much formal work on objects (see sec­
tion 6), the literature on objects does not seem to contain an analogue for Floyd's

Source: Abadi, Martín - Department of Computer Science, University of California at Santa Cruz

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences