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Section 6: References, Ownership, and Borrowing

TECHSPEC-06 — Section 6 · Version 0.1 · Status: Initial Draft

Status: draft. This section is an Initial Draft (Section 57 is a Working Register). It describes intended or proposed behavior, not a finalized, implemented language rule. Do not treat examples here as normative.

1. Ownership Philosophy

Every mutable resource must have a clearly defined owner.

The language must prevent invalid memory access, conflicting modifications, and resource lifetime violations.

2. Ownership Rules

  • Every owned value has one owner.
  • Ownership transfers must be explicit.
  • The previous owner cannot access a value after transferring ownership.
  • Values must not be accessed after their lifetime ends.
  • Resources must be released when their ownership ends.

3. References

References allow code to access values without transferring ownership.

The language supports:

  • READ REF: Read-only reference.
  • MUT REF: Mutable reference.

Examples:

LET accountRef: READ REF<Account> = BORROW account

LET accountMut: MUT REF<Account> = BORROW MUT account

4. Borrowing Rules

  • Multiple read-only references may exist simultaneously.
  • Only one mutable reference may exist at a time.
  • Read-only and mutable references cannot conflict.
  • References cannot outlive their original values.
  • References cannot be used after their owner releases or transfers the value.

5. Resource Management

Resources include: - Memory allocations. - Files. - Database connections. - Network connections. - Locks. - Other externally managed resources.

Rules: - Resources must have defined lifetimes. - Resources must be released exactly once. - Cleanup must occur on normal returns and supported failure paths. - Resource ownership transfers must be explicit. - Failed operations must not leave resources in an invalid ownership state.

6. Compiler Responsibilities

The compiler must: - Track ownership. - Validate ownership transfers. - Track reference lifetimes. - Detect conflicting mutable access. - Reject dangling references. - Detect use-after-release. - Enforce resource cleanup requirements.

7. Design Goal

AI agents must not be able to introduce common memory-safety and resource-management errors through careless sharing, modification, or lifetime handling.

Source file: TECHSPEC-6.md (preserved in source-original/LANG/). See the specification index, the glossary, and the cross-reference index.