[Pl-seminar] 8/10: Sukyoung Ryu, "Formal Specification of a JavaScript Module System"

[Aaron Turon]

NEU Programming Languages Seminar presents

Sukyoung Ryu
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Wednesday, 8/10

11:45am - 1:30pm
Room 366 WVH (http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/wand/directions.html)

Formal Specification of a JavaScript Module System

The JavaScript programming language, originally developed as a simple
scripting language, is now the language of choice for web
applications.  All the top 100 sites on the web use JavaScript and its
use outside web pages is rapidly growing.  However, JavaScript is not
yet ready for programming in the large: it does not support a module
system.  Lack of namespaces introduces various module patterns, and
makes it difficult to use multiple JavaScript frameworks together.

In this paper, we propose a formal specification of a JavaScript
module system.  A module system for JavaScript will allow safe and
incremental development of JavaScript web applications.  While the
next version of the JavaScript standard proposes a module system, it
informally describes its design in prose.  We formally define a module
system as an extension to the existing JavaScript language, and
rigorously describe its semantics via desugaring to the original
JavaScript.