[E-Lang] Making C programs safe and turning filenames into capabilities

[Mark Seaborn]

Hello all,

You might be interested in something I have been working on:  a scheme
for translating C programs into a safe language.  This means a
program's ambient authority to access memory can be removed and
replaced by capabilities to access memory.  The same technique can be
applied to turn filenames into unforgeable capabilities for files.
This could be useful for converting the huge number of Unix programs
to work on a capability system.

I have put an early draft of a paper describing this scheme at
<http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~mrs35/comp/safe-c/making-c-programs-safe.txt>.

I look forward to any comments people have on this!  I'm planning to
implement this next year at university.

-- 
         Mark Seaborn
   - mseaborn@bigfoot.com - http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~mrs35/ -

  ``Every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret 
      conviction that nothing can be changed'' -- George Orwell