Safely extending procedure types to allow nested procedures as values (corrected version)

Abstract

The concept of nested procedure values, i. e., the possibility of using nested procedures as values of procedure types, is a useful and powerful concept. Nevertheless, it is not allowed in languages such as Modula-2 and Oberon(-2), because it creates a serious security hole when used inappropriately. To prevent such misuse while at the same time retaining the benefits of the concept, alternative language rules as well as a small language extension for Oberon-2 are suggested, which allow nested procedures to be safely used as values of procedure types and especially to pass them as parameters to other procedures.