Chapter 6

Data Types

ISBN 0-321—49362-1
Chapter 6 Topics

• Introduction
• Primitive Data Types
• Character String Types
• User-Defined Ordinal Types
• Array Types
• Associative Arrays
• Record Types
• Union Types
• Pointer and Reference Types

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Introduction

• A data type defines a collection of data

objects and a set of predefined operations
on those objects
• A descriptor is the collection of the
attributes of a variable
• An object represents an instance of a
user-defined (abstract data) type
• One design issue for all data types: What
operations are defined and how are they
specified?

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Primitive Data Types

• Almost all programming languages provide

a set of primitive data types
• Primitive data types: Those not defined in
terms of other data types
• Some primitive data types are merely
reflections of the hardware
• Others require only a little non-hardware
support for their implementation

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Primitive Data Types: Integer

• Almost always an exact reflection of the

hardware so the mapping is trivial
• There may be as many as eight different
integer types in a language
• Java’s signed integer sizes: byte, short,
int, long

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Primitive Data Types: Floating Point

• Model real numbers, but only as

approximations
• Languages for scientific use support at
least two floating-point types (e.g., float
and double; sometimes more
• Usually exactly like the hardware, but not
always
• IEEE Floating-Point
Standard 754

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Primitive Data Types: Complex

• Some languages support a complex type,

e.g., C99, Fortran, and Python
• Each value consists of two floats, the real
part and the imaginary part
• Literal form (in Python):
(7 + 3j), where 7 is the real part and 3 is
the imaginary part

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Primitive Data Types: Decimal

• For business applications (money)

– Essential to COBOL
– C# offers a decimal data type
• Store a fixed number of decimal digits, in
coded form (BCD)
• Advantage: accuracy
• Disadvantages: limited range, wastes
memory

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Primitive Data Types: Boolean

• Simplest of all
• Range of values: two elements, one for
―true‖ and one for ―false‖
• Could be implemented as bits, but often as
bytes
– Advantage: readability

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Primitive Data Types: Character

• Stored as numeric codings

• Most commonly used coding: ASCII
• An alternative, 16-bit coding: Unicode
(UCS-2)
– Includes characters from most natural
languages
– Originally used in Java
– C# and JavaScript also support Unicode
• 32-bit Unicode (UCS-4)
– Supported by Fortran, starting with 2003
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Character String Types

• Values are sequences of characters

• Design issues:
– Is it a primitive type or just a special kind of
array?
– Should the length of strings be static or
dynamic?

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Character String Types Operations

• Typical operations:
– Assignment and copying
– Comparison (=, >, etc.)
– Catenation
– Substring reference
– Pattern matching

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Character String Type in Certain
Languages
• C and C++
– Not primitive
– Use char arrays and a library of functions that provide
operations
• SNOBOL4 (a string manipulation language)
– Primitive
– Many operations, including elaborate pattern matching
• Fortran and Python
– Primitive type with assignment and several operations
• Java
– Primitive via the String class
• Perl, JavaScript, Ruby, and PHP
- Provide built-in pattern matching, using regular
expressions

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Character String Length Options

• Static: COBOL, Java’s String class

• Limited Dynamic Length: C and C++
– In these languages, a special character is used
to indicate the end of a string’s characters,
rather than maintaining the length
• Dynamic (no maximum): SNOBOL4, Perl,
JavaScript
• Ada supports all three string length options

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Character String Type Evaluation

• Aid to writability
• As a primitive type with static length, they
are inexpensive to provide--why not have
them?
• Dynamic length is nice, but is it worth the
expense?

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Character String Implementation

• Static length: compile-time descriptor

• Limited dynamic length: may need a run-
time descriptor for length (but not in C and
C++)
• Dynamic length: need run-time descriptor;
allocation/de-allocation is the biggest
implementation problem

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Compile- and Run-Time Descriptors

Compile-time Run-time
descriptor for descriptor for
static strings limited dynamic
strings
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User-Defined Ordinal Types

• An ordinal type is one in which the range of

possible values can be easily associated
with the set of positive integers
• Examples of primitive ordinal types in Java
– integer
– char
– boolean

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Enumeration Types

• All possible values, which are named

constants, are provided in the definition
• C# example
enum days {mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun};
• Design issues
– Is an enumeration constant allowed to appear in
more than one type definition, and if so, how is
the type of an occurrence of that constant
checked?
– Are enumeration values coerced to integer?
– Any other type coerced to an enumeration type?

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Evaluation of Enumerated Type

• Aid to readability, e.g., no need to code a

color as a number
• Aid to reliability, e.g., compiler can check:
– operations (don’t allow colors to be added)
– No enumeration variable can be assigned a
value outside its defined range
– Ada, C#, and Java 5.0 provide better support for
enumeration than C++ because enumeration
type variables in these languages are not
coerced into integer types

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Subrange Types

• An ordered contiguous subsequence of an

ordinal type
– Example: 12..18 is a subrange of integer type
• Ada’s design
type Days is (mon, tue, wed, thu, fri, sat, sun);
subtype Weekdays is Days range mon..fri;
subtype Index is Integer range 1..100;

Day1: Days;
Day2: Weekday;
Day2 := Day1;

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Subrange Evaluation

• Aid to readability
– Make it clear to the readers that variables of
subrange can store only certain range of values
• Reliability
– Assigning a value to a subrange variable that is
outside the specified range is detected as an
error

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Implementation of User-Defined
Ordinal Types

• Enumeration types are implemented as

integers
• Subrange types are implemented like the
parent types with code inserted (by the
compiler) to restrict assignments to
subrange variables

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Array Types

• An array is an aggregate of homogeneous

data elements in which an individual
element is identified by its position in the
aggregate, relative to the first element.

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Array Design Issues

• What types are legal for subscripts?

• Are subscripting expressions in element
references range checked?
• When are subscript ranges bound?
• When does allocation take place?
• What is the maximum number of
subscripts?
• Can array objects be initialized?
• Are any kind of slices supported?

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Array Indexing

• Indexing (or subscripting) is a mapping

from indices to elements
array_name (index_value_list)  an element
• Index Syntax
– FORTRAN, PL/I, Ada use parentheses
• Ada explicitly uses parentheses to show uniformity
between array references and function calls because
both are mappings
– Most other languages use brackets

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Arrays Index (Subscript) Types

• FORTRAN, C: integer only

• Ada: integer or enumeration (includes Boolean and
char)
• Java: integer types only
• Index range checking
- C, C++, Perl, and Fortran do not specify
range checking
- Java, ML, C# specify range checking
- In Ada, the default is to require range
checking, but it can be turned off

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Subscript Binding and Array Categories

• Static: subscript ranges are statically

bound and storage allocation is static
(before run-time)
– Advantage: efficiency (no dynamic allocation)
• Fixed stack-dynamic: subscript ranges are
statically bound, but the allocation is done
at declaration time
– Advantage: space efficiency

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Subscript Binding and Array Categories
(continued)

• Stack-dynamic: subscript ranges are

dynamically bound and the storage
allocation is dynamic (done at run-time)
– Advantage: flexibility (the size of an array need
not be known until the array is to be used)
• Fixed heap-dynamic: similar to fixed stack-
dynamic: storage binding is dynamic but
fixed after allocation (i.e., binding is done
when requested and storage is allocated
from heap, not stack)

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Subscript Binding and Array Categories
(continued)

• Heap-dynamic: binding of subscript ranges

and storage allocation is dynamic and can
change any number of times
– Advantage: flexibility (arrays can grow or shrink
during program execution)

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Subscript Binding and Array Categories
(continued)
• C and C++ arrays that include static
modifier are static
• C and C++ arrays without static modifier
are fixed stack-dynamic
• C and C++ provide fixed heap-dynamic
arrays
• C# includes a second array class ArrayList
that provides fixed heap-dynamic
• Perl, JavaScript, Python, and Ruby support
heap-dynamic arrays
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Array Initialization

• Some language allow initialization at the

time of storage allocation
– C, C++, Java, C# example
int list [] = {4, 5, 7, 83}
– Character strings in C and C++
char name [] = ―freddie‖;
– Arrays of strings in C and C++
char *names [] = {―Bob‖, ―Jake‖, ―Joe‖];
– Java initialization of String objects
String[] names = {―Bob‖, ―Jake‖, ―Joe‖};

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Heterogeneous Arrays

• A heterogeneous array is one in which the

elements need not be of the same type
• Supported by Perl, Python, JavaScript, and
Ruby

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Array Initialization

• C-based languages
– int list [] = {1, 3, 5, 7}
– char *names [] = {―Mike‖, ―Fred‖,―Mary Lou‖};
• Ada
– List : array (1..5) of Integer :=
(1 => 17, 3 => 34, others => 0);
• Python
– List comprehensions
list = [x ** 2 for x in range(12) if x % 3 == 0]
puts [0, 9, 36, 81] in list

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Arrays Operations
• APL provides the most powerful array processing
operations for vectors and matrixes as well as
unary operators (for example, to reverse column
elements)
• Ada allows array assignment but also catenation
• Python’s array assignments, but they are only
reference changes. Python also supports array
catenation and element membership operations
• Ruby also provides array catenation
• Fortran provides elemental operations because
they are between pairs of array elements
– For example, + operator between two arrays results in an
array of the sums of the element pairs of the two arrays

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Rectangular and Jagged Arrays

• A rectangular array is a multi-dimensioned

array in which all of the rows have the same
number of elements and all columns have
the same number of elements
• A jagged matrix has rows with varying
number of elements
– Possible when multi-dimensioned arrays
actually appear as arrays of arrays
• C, C++, and Java support jagged arrays
• Fortran, Ada, and C# support rectangular
arrays (C# also supports jagged arrays)
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Slices

• A slice is some substructure of an array;

nothing more than a referencing
mechanism
• Slices are only useful in languages that
have array operations

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Slice Examples

• Fortran 95
Integer, Dimension (10) :: Vector
Integer, Dimension (3, 3) :: Mat
Integer, Dimension (3, 3) :: Cube

Vector (3:6) is a four element array

• Ruby supports slices with the slice method

list.slice(2, 2) returns the third and fourth
elements of list

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Slices Examples in Fortran 95

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Implementation of Arrays

• Access function maps subscript expressions

to an address in the array
• Access function for single-dimensioned
arrays:
address(list[k]) = address (list[lower_bound])
+ ((k-lower_bound) * element_size)

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Accessing Multi-dimensioned Arrays

• Two common ways:

– Row major order (by rows) – used in most
languages
– column major order (by columns) – used in
Fortran

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Locating an Element in a Multi-
dimensioned Array
•General format
Location (a[I,j]) = address of a [row_lb,col_lb] +
(((I - row_lb) * n) + (j - col_lb)) * element_size

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Compile-Time Descriptors

Single-dimensioned array Multi-dimensional array

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Associative Arrays

• An associative array is an unordered

collection of data elements that are
indexed by an equal number of values
called keys
– User-defined keys must be stored
• Design issues:
- What is the form of references to elements?
- Is the size static or dynamic?
• Built-in type in Perl, Python, Ruby, and Lua
– In Lua, they are supported by tables
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Associative Arrays in Perl

• Names begin with %; literals are delimited

by parentheses
%hi_temps = ("Mon" => 77, "Tue" => 79,
―Wed‖ => 65, …);
• Subscripting is done using braces and keys
$hi_temps{"Wed"} = 83;
– Elements can be removed with delete
delete $hi_temps{"Tue"};

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Record Types

• A record is a possibly heterogeneous

aggregate of data elements in which the
individual elements are identified by names
• Design issues:
– What is the syntactic form of references to the
field?
– Are elliptical references allowed

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Definition of Records in COBOL

• COBOL uses level numbers to show nested

records; others use recursive definition
01 EMP-REC.
02 EMP-NAME.
05 FIRST PIC X(20).
05 MID PIC X(10).
05 LAST PIC X(20).
02 HOURLY-RATE PIC 99V99.

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Definition of Records in Ada
• Record structures are indicated in an
orthogonal way
type Emp_Rec_Type is record
First: String (1..20);
Mid: String (1..10);
Last: String (1..20);
Hourly_Rate: Float;
end record;
Emp_Rec: Emp_Rec_Type;

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References to Records
• Record field references
1. COBOL
field_name OF record_name_1 OF ... OF record_name_n
2. Others (dot notation)
record_name_1.record_name_2. ... record_name_n.field_name

• Fully qualified references must include all record names

• Elliptical references allow leaving out record names as long

as the reference is unambiguous, for example in COBOL
FIRST, FIRST OF EMP-NAME, and FIRST of EMP-REC are
elliptical references to the employee’s first name

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Operations on Records

• Assignment is very common if the types are

identical
• Ada allows record comparison
• Ada records can be initialized with
aggregate literals
• COBOL provides MOVE CORRESPONDING
– Copies a field of the source record to the
corresponding field in the target record

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Evaluation and Comparison to Arrays

• Records are used when collection of data

values is heterogeneous
• Access to array elements is much slower
than access to record fields, because
subscripts are dynamic (field names are
static)
• Dynamic subscripts could be used with
record field access, but it would disallow
type checking and it would be much slower

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Implementation of Record Type

Offset address relative to

the beginning of the records
is associated with each field

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Unions Types

• A union is a type whose variables are

allowed to store different type values at
different times during execution
• Design issues
– Should type checking be required?
– Should unions be embedded in records?

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Discriminated vs. Free Unions

• Fortran, C, and C++ provide union

constructs in which there is no language
support for type checking; the union in
these languages is called free union
• Type checking of unions require that each
union include a type indicator called a
discriminant
– Supported by Ada

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Ada Union Types

type Shape is (Circle, Triangle, Rectangle);

type Colors is (Red, Green, Blue);
type Figure (Form: Shape) is record
Filled: Boolean;
Color: Colors;
case Form is
when Circle => Diameter: Float;
when Triangle =>
Leftside, Rightside: Integer;
Angle: Float;
when Rectangle => Side1, Side2: Integer;
end case;
end record;

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Ada Union Type Illustrated

A discriminated union of three shape variables

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Evaluation of Unions

• Free unions are unsafe

– Do not allow type checking
• Java and C# do not support unions
– Reflective of growing concerns for safety in
programming language
• Ada’s descriminated unions are safe

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Pointer and Reference Types

• A pointer type variable has a range of

values that consists of memory addresses
and a special value, nil
• Provide the power of indirect addressing
• Provide a way to manage dynamic memory
• A pointer can be used to access a location
in the area where storage is dynamically
created (usually called a heap)

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Design Issues of Pointers

• What are the scope of and lifetime of a

pointer variable?
• What is the lifetime of a heap-dynamic
variable?
• Are pointers restricted as to the type of
value to which they can point?
• Are pointers used for dynamic storage
management, indirect addressing, or both?
• Should the language support pointer types,
reference types, or both?

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Pointer Operations

• Two fundamental operations: assignment

and dereferencing
• Assignment is used to set a pointer
variable’s value to some useful address
• Dereferencing yields the value stored at the
location represented by the pointer’s value
– Dereferencing can be explicit or implicit
– C++ uses an explicit operation via *
j = *ptr
sets j to the value located at ptr

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Pointer Assignment Illustrated

The assignment operation j = *ptr

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Problems with Pointers

• Dangling pointers (dangerous)

– A pointer points to a heap-dynamic variable that has been
deallocated
• Lost heap-dynamic variable
– An allocated heap-dynamic variable that is no longer
accessible to the user program (often called garbage)
• Pointer p1 is set to point to a newly created heap-
dynamic variable
• Pointer p1 is later set to point to another newly created
heap-dynamic variable
• The process of losing heap-dynamic variables is called
memory leakage

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Pointers in Ada

• Some dangling pointers are disallowed

because dynamic objects can be
automatically deallocated at the end of
pointer's type scope
• The lost heap-dynamic variable problem is
not eliminated by Ada (possible with
UNCHECKED_DEALLOCATION)

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Pointers in C and C++

• Extremely flexible but must be used with care

• Pointers can point at any variable regardless of
when or where it was allocated
• Used for dynamic storage management and
addressing
• Pointer arithmetic is possible
• Explicit dereferencing and address-of operators
• Domain type need not be fixed (void *)
void * can point to any type and can be type
checked (cannot be de-referenced)

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Pointer Arithmetic in C and C++

float stuff[100];
float *p;
p = stuff;

*(p+5) is equivalent to stuff[5] and p[5]

*(p+i) is equivalent to stuff[i] and p[i]

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Reference Types

• C++ includes a special kind of pointer type

called a reference type that is used
primarily for formal parameters
– Advantages of both pass-by-reference and
pass-by-value
• Java extends C++’s reference variables and
allows them to replace pointers entirely
– References are references to objects, rather than
being addresses
• C# includes both the references of Java and
the pointers of C++

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Evaluation of Pointers

• Dangling pointers and dangling objects are

problems as is heap management
• Pointers are like goto's--they widen the
range of cells that can be accessed by a
variable
• Pointers or references are necessary for
dynamic data structures--so we can't
design a language without them

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Representations of Pointers

• Large computers use single values

• Intel microprocessors use segment and
offset

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Dangling Pointer Problem

• Tombstone: extra heap cell that is a pointer to the

heap-dynamic variable
– The actual pointer variable points only at tombstones
– When heap-dynamic variable de-allocated, tombstone
remains but set to nil
– Costly in time and space
. Locks-and-keys: Pointer values are represented as
(key, address) pairs
– Heap-dynamic variables are represented as variable plus
cell for integer lock value
– When heap-dynamic variable allocated, lock value is
created and placed in lock cell and key cell of pointer

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Heap Management

• A very complex run-time process

• Single-size cells vs. variable-size cells
• Two approaches to reclaim garbage
– Reference counters (eager approach):
reclamation is gradual
– Mark-sweep (lazy approach): reclamation
occurs when the list of variable space becomes
empty

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Reference Counter

• Reference counters: maintain a counter in

every cell that store the number of pointers
currently pointing at the cell
– Disadvantages: space required, execution time
required, complications for cells connected
circularly
– Advantage: it is intrinsically incremental, so
significant delays in the application execution
are avoided

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Mark-Sweep

• The run-time system allocates storage cells as

requested and disconnects pointers from cells
as necessary; mark-sweep then begins
– Every heap cell has an extra bit used by collection
algorithm
– All cells initially set to garbage
– All pointers traced into heap, and reachable cells
marked as not garbage
– All garbage cells returned to list of available cells
– Disadvantages: in its original form, it was done too
infrequently. When done, it caused significant delays in
application execution. Contemporary mark-sweep
algorithms avoid this by doing it more often—called
incremental mark-sweep
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Marking Algorithm

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Variable-Size Cells

• All the difficulties of single-size cells plus

more
• Required by most programming languages
• If mark-sweep is used, additional problems
occur
– The initial setting of the indicators of all cells in
the heap is difficult
– The marking process in nontrivial
– Maintaining the list of available space is another
source of overhead

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Type Checking

• Generalize the concept of operands and operators to include

subprograms and assignments

• Type checking is the activity of ensuring that the operands of

an operator are of compatible types

• A compatible type is one that is either legal for the operator,

or is allowed under language rules to be implicitly converted,
by compiler- generated code, to a legal type
– This automatic conversion is called a coercion.

• A type error is the application of an operator to an operand

of an inappropriate type

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Type Checking (continued)

• If all type bindings are static, nearly all type

checking can be static
• If type bindings are dynamic, type checking
must be dynamic
• A programming language is strongly typed
if type errors are always detected
• Advantage of strong typing: allows the
detection of the misuses of variables that
result in type errors

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Strong Typing

Language examples:
– FORTRAN 95 is not: parameters, EQUIVALENCE
– C and C++ are not: parameter type checking
can be avoided; unions are not type checked
– Ada is, almost (UNCHECKED CONVERSION is
loophole)
(Java and C# are similar to Ada)

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Strong Typing (continued)

• Coercion rules strongly affect strong

typing--they can weaken it considerably
(C++ versus Ada)

• Although Java has just half the assignment

coercions of C++, its strong typing is still
far less effective than that of Ada

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Name Type Equivalence

• Name type equivalence means the two

variables have equivalent types if they are
in either the same declaration or in
declarations that use the same type name
• Easy to implement but highly restrictive:
– Subranges of integer types are not equivalent
with integer types
– Formal parameters must be the same type as
their corresponding actual parameters

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Structure Type Equivalence

• Structure type equivalence means that two

variables have equivalent types if their
types have identical structures
• More flexible, but harder to implement

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Type Equivalence (continued)

• Consider the problem of two structured types:

– Are two record types equivalent if they are
structurally the same but use different field
names?
– Are two array types equivalent if they are the
same except that the subscripts are different?
(e.g. [1..10] and [0..9])
– Are two enumeration types equivalent if their
components are spelled differently?
– With structural type equivalence, you cannot
differentiate between types of the same
structure (e.g. different units of speed, both
float)
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Theory and Data Types

• Type theory is a broad area of study in

mathematics, logic, computer science, and
philosophy
• Two branches of type theory in computer
science:
– Practical – data types in commercial languages
– Abstract – typed lambda calculus

• A type system is a set of types and the

rules that govern their use in programs
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Theory and Data Types (continued)

• Formal model of a type system is a set of

types and a collection of functions that
define the type rules
– Either an attribute grammar or a type map could
be used for the functions
– Finite mappings – model arrays and functions
– Cartesian products – model tuples and records
– Set unions – model union types
– Subsets – model subtypes

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Summary

• The data types of a language are a large part of

what determines that language’s style and
usefulness
• The primitive data types of most imperative
languages include numeric, character, and Boolean
types
• The user-defined enumeration and subrange types
are convenient and add to the readability and
reliability of programs
• Arrays and records are included in most languages
• Pointers are used for addressing flexibility and to
control dynamic storage management

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