Simple Reference Immutability for System F

Abstract

Reference immutability is a type based technique for taming mutation that has long been studied in the context of object-oriented languages, like Java. Recently, though, languages like Scala have blurred the lines between functional programming languages and object oriented programming languages. We explore how reference immutability interacts with features commonly found in these hybrid languages, in particular with higher-order functions – polymorphism – and subtyping. We construct a calculus System F<:M which encodes a reference immutability system as a simple extension of System F<: and prove that it satisfies the standard soundness and immutability safety properties.