Dynamic Alias Protection in Prototype-Based Languages

One of the advantages of prototype-based languages is that they provide self-sufficient objects which do not depend on classes or other objects for their definitions. But objects can refer to other objects, and the effects of these inter-object references introduce arbitrary, uncontrolled dependencies between objects. We propose adding an explicit notion of object ownership to control dependencies and references between objects. Object ownership can also enhance object cloning and avoid the prototype corruption problem, making programs easier to write and easier to understand.