source: doc/theses/mike_brooks_MMath/uw-ethesis-frontpgs.tex@ f2b74e3

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  % TODO: punch up the title, thinking getting interest in the department-wide posting of my presentation
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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}
  \noindent
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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Internal-External Member: \=  \kill % using longest text to define tab length
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: \=  \kill % using longest text to define tab length
Internal-External Member: \> Meta Meta \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Waterloo \\
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Internal-External Member: \=  \kill % using longest text to define tab length
Other Member(s): \> Leeping Fang \\
\> Professor, Dept. of Fine Art, University of Waterloo \\
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  % The following is a sample Declaration Page as provided by the GSO
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 \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Author's Declaration}
 \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}

\CFA strives to fix mistakes in C, chief among them, safety.
This thesis presents a significant step forward in \CFA's goal to remove unsafe pointer operations.
The thesis presents improvements to the \CFA language design, both syntax and semantics, to support advanced container features.
These features are implemented across the \CFA compiler, libraries, and runtime system.
The results maintain another \CFA goal of remaining 99\% backwards compatible with C.
This thesis leverages preexisting work within the compiler's type and runtime systems generated by prior students working on the \CFA project.

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-lists are built from (recursive) pointer types, and strings 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 involving 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.

Specifically, an array utility is provided that tracks length internally, relieving the user of managing explicit length parameters and stopping buffer-overrun errors.
This feature requires augmenting the \CFA type system, making array length available at compile and runtime.
A linked-list utility is provided, which obviates many explicit recursive pointers by catering directly to system-programming uses (intrusive lists) for which a library solution is often dismissed.
Finally, a string utility is provided with implicit memory management of text in a specialized heap, relieving error-prone buffer management, including overrun, and providing a copy-on-write speed boost.
For all three utilities, performance is argued to be on-par with, and occasionally surpassing relevant comparators.
With the array, this case is made by showing complete erasure down to a naked C array, modulo runtime bound checks, which are removable more often than with Java-style length management.
With the linked list and string, empirical measures are compared with relevant libraries.
These utilities offer a system programmer workable alternatives to hand-rolling several common causes of system vulnerabilities, thereby improving \CFA's position as a safety-forward system-programming alternative.

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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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