Special issue on foundations of aspect-oriented programming

This SCP special collects articles that make contributions to the foundations of aspect-oriented programming (AOP). Aspects have been developed over the last 10 years to facilitate the modularization of crosscutting concerns, i.e., concerns that crosscut with the primary modularization of a program. This special issue further continues the efforts of the annual FOAL workshop (Foundations of Aspect-Oriented Languages) in so far that it supports and integrates research on firm foundations of AOP. There are 5 contributions addressing the following issues: (i) a fundamental core language for aspects; (ii) subtleties of so-called around advice; (iii) aspects in higher-order languages; (iv) the interaction between aspects and generics; (v) a notion of aspects for reactive systems based on synchronous languages.