source: doc/theses/mike_brooks_MMath/uw-ethesis-frontpgs.tex@ c2f6b79

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        {\Huge\bf \CFA Container Library}

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        by \\

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        {\Large Michael Leslie Brooks} \\

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        A thesis \\
        presented to the University of Waterloo \\
        in fulfillment of the \\
        thesis requirement for the degree of \\
        Master of Mathematics \\
        in \\
        Computer Science \\

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        Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, \the\year \\

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        \copyright{} Michael Leslie Brooks \the\year \\
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% E X A M I N I N G   C O M M I T T E E (Required for Ph.D. theses only)
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\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Examining Committee}
\begin{center}\textbf{Examining Committee Membership}\end{center}
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The following served on the Examining Committee for this thesis. The decision of the Examining Committee is by majority vote.
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Internal-External Member: \=  \kill % using longest text to define tab length
External Examiner: \>  Bruce Bruce \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Philosophy of Zoology, University of Wallamaloo \\
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Supervisor(s): \> Ann Elk \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Zoology, University of Waterloo \\
\> Andrea Anaconda \\
\> Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Zoology, University of Waterloo \\
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Internal Member: \> Pamela Python \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Zoology, University of Waterloo \\
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Internal-External Member: \> Meta Meta \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Waterloo \\
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Other Member(s): \> Leeping Fang \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Fine Art, University of Waterloo \\
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 \begin{center}\textbf{Author's Declaration}\end{center}

 \noindent
I hereby declare that I am the sole author of this thesis. This is a true copy of the thesis, including any required final revisions, as accepted by my examiners.

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  \noindent
I understand that my thesis may be made electronically available to the public.

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% A B S T R A C T
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\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Abstract}
\begin{center}\textbf{Abstract}\end{center}

All modern programming languages provide three high-level containers (collections): array, linked-list, and string.
Often array is part of the programming language, while linked-list is built from (recursive) pointer types, and string from a combination of array and linked-list.
For all three types, languages and/or their libraries supply varying degrees of high-level mechanisms for manipulating these objects at the bulk and component level, such as copying, slicing, extracting, and iterating among elements.
Unfortunately, these three aspects of C cause 60\%--70\% of the reported software vulnerabilities involved memory errors, and 70\%--80\% of hacker attack-vectors target these types.
Therefore, hardening these three C types goes a long way to make the majority of C programs safer.

This work looks at extending these three foundational container types in the programming language \CFA, which is a new dialect of the C programming language.
The thesis describes improvements made to the \CFA language design, both syntax and semantics, to support the container features, and the source code created within the \CFA compiler, libraries, and runtime system to implement these features.
This work leverages preexisting work within the compiler's type and runtime systems generated by prior students working on the \CFA project.

Overall, this work has produced significant syntactic and semantic improvements to C's container types.
\begin{enumerate}[leftmargin=*]
\item
Introduce a small number of subtle changes to the typing rules for the C array, while still achieving significant backwards compatibility.
\item
Create a new polymorphic mechanism in the \CFA @forall@ clause to specify array dimension values, similar to a fixed-typed parameter in a \CC \lstinline[language=C++]{template}.
The new array type, enabled by prior features, defines an array with guaranteed runtime bound checks (often optimizer-removable) and implicit (guaranteed accurate) inter-function length communication.
\item
Create a new polymorphic list type and its runtime library following the established design pattern of intrusive link-fields for performance reasons, especially in concurrent programs.
\item
Create a new string type and runtime library comparable to the \CC @string@ type, including analogous coexistence with raw-character pointers, enabling programs to work with strings by value, without incurring excessive copying.
Substrings are supported, including the ability for overlapping ranges to share edits transparently.
\end{enumerate}
The thesis includes a performance evaluation that shows the new \CFA containers perform comparably with their C counterparts in many programming cases.

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\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Acknowledgements}
\begin{center}\textbf{Acknowledgements}\end{center}

I would like to thank all the little people who made this thesis possible.

Finally, a special thank you to Huawei Canada for funding this work.
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\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Dedication}
\begin{center}\textbf{Dedication}\end{center}

This is dedicated to the one I love.
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