uC++ annotated reference manual (preliminary draft)

Abstract

The goal of this work is to introduce concurrency into the object-oriented language C++ [Str91]. To achieve this goal a set of important programming language abstractions were adapted to C++, producing a new dialect called {mu}C++. These abstractions were derived from a set of design requirements and combinations of elementary execution properties, different combinations of which categorized existing programming language abstractions and suggested new ones. The set of important abstractions contains those needed to express concurrency, as well as some that are not directly related to concurrency. Therefore, while the focus of this work is on concurrency, all the abstractions produced from the elementary properties are discussed. While we are implementing our ideas as an extension to C++, the requirements and elementary properties are generally applicable to other object-oriented languages such as Eiffel [Mey88], Simula [Sta87] and Smalltalk [GR83]. This manual does not discuss how to use the new constructs to build complex concurrent systems. The manual is strictly a reference manual for {mu}C++. A reader should have an intermediate knowledge of control oow and concurrency issues to understand the ideas presented in this manual as well as some experience programming in C++.