Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Michael Sinz

John Joseph Duffy

Jared Porter Parsons

Krzysztof J Cwalina

Alexander Daniel Bromfield

Aleksandra Nadia Culver

The annotation of a returned reference from an executable component to signify that there are no external references to the particular object graph referenced by the returned reference. If either 1) there are no input arguments to the executable component or 2) each input argument is either immutable or represents an object graph that has no external mutable references pointing into the object graph, and no internal mutable references that reference external objects, the particular attribute is assigned to the returned reference. Accordingly, if the returned reference is writable (as determined by evaluating the declaration code or the call code for the executable component), the returned reference is free to have whatever access permissions assigned to it, and may also be assigned to an isolated memory location, though such assignments will cause the returned reference to lose the particular attribute.

Reference attribute annotation signifying no external reference

A language extension that advances safety in system programming in that an entire type may be declared to be immutable in the case in which all instances of that type are immutable. The immutable type declaration automatically causes any instances of that type to be treated as immutable, and automatically causes all directly or indirectly reachable members (e.g., fields, methods, properties) of the instance to also be treated as immutable. Furthermore, any construction time reference that allows for field assignment of the instance is not permitted to survive beyond the point at which the instance becomes accessible to its creator. Accordingly, this instance, and any other instance of that same type, will be immutable from the very time of construction. The ability to classify all such instances as immutable is beneficial as the immutable characteristic permits actions that normally would not be allowed due to resource access safety.

Resource access safety through immutable object types

System and method to ensure resource access safety with immutable object types

The scheduling of a group of work units across multiple computerized worker processes. A group of work units is defined and assigned to a first worker. The worker uses the definition of the group of work units to determine when processing is completed on the group of work units. Stealing workers may steal work from the first worker, and steal from the group of work initially assigned to the first worker, by altering the definition of the group of work units assigned to the first worker. The altered definition results in the first worker never completing a subset of the work units original assigned to the first worker, thereby allowing the stealing worker to complete work on that subset of work units. The process may perhaps be performed recursively in that the stealing worker may have some of its work stolen in the same way.

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Michael Sinz