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Type inference in the presence of type abstraction

Author:

H.-J. BoehmAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 24, Issue 7

Pages 192 - 206

https://doi.org/10.1145/74818.74835

Published: 21 June 1989 Publication History

Abstract

A number of recent programming language designs incorporate a type checking system based on the Girard-Reynolds polymorphic λ-calculus. This allows the construction of general purpose, reusable software without sacrificing compile-time type checking. A major factor constraining the implementation of these languages is the difficulty of automatically inferring the lengthy type information that is otherwise required if full use is made of these languages. There is no known algorithm to solve any natural and fully general formulation of this “type inference” problem. One very reasonable formulation of the problem is known to be undecidable.

Here we define a restricted version of the type inference problem and present an efficient algorithm for its solution. We argue that the restriction is sufficiently weak to be unobtrusive in practice.

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Cited By

Walenz BYang J(2016)Perturbation analysis of database queriesProceedings of the VLDB Endowment10.14778/3007328.30073309:14(1635-1646)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3007328.3007330
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https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3007263.3007268
Padget JBatey DMerrall S(2005)Architecture independence and coordinationParallel Symbolic Computing: Languages, Systems, and Applications10.1007/BFb0018658(287-299)Online publication date: 31-May-2005
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Index Terms

Type inference in the presence of type abstraction
1. Theory of computation

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 24, Issue 7

Proceedings of the SIGPLAN '89 symposium on Interpreters and interpretive techniques

July 1989

355 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/74818

Editor:
Richard Wexelblat

Issue’s Table of Contents

PLDI '89: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1989 conference on Programming language design and implementation
June 1989
355 pages
ISBN:089791306X
DOI:10.1145/73141
Editor:
R. L. Wexelblat
ACM Headquarters, New York, NY

Copyright © 1989 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 21 June 1989

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 24, Issue 7

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Cited By

Walenz BYang J(2016)Perturbation analysis of database queriesProceedings of the VLDB Endowment10.14778/3007328.30073309:14(1635-1646)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3007328.3007330
Ma EGupta VHsu MRoy I(2016)dmapplyProceedings of the VLDB Endowment10.14778/3007263.30072689:13(1293-1304)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.14778/3007263.3007268
Padget JBatey DMerrall S(2005)Architecture independence and coordinationParallel Symbolic Computing: Languages, Systems, and Applications10.1007/BFb0018658(287-299)Online publication date: 31-May-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0018658
Garofalakis MGibbons P(2004)Probabilistic wavelet synopsesACM Transactions on Database Systems10.1145/974750.97475329:1(43-90)Online publication date: 1-Mar-2004
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/974750.974753
Kumar K(2003)Value reuse optimizationACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/944579.94459138:8(60-66)Online publication date: 1-Aug-2003
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/944579.944591
Bernecky RBrenner CJaffe SMoeckel G(1990)ACORN: APL to C on real numbersACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad10.1145/97811.9782120:4(40-49)Online publication date: 1-May-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/97811.97821
Benkard J(1990)Nonce functionsACM SIGAPL APL Quote Quad10.1145/97811.9782020:4(27-39)Online publication date: 1-May-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/97811.97820
Debray SLin NHermnegildo M(1990)Task granularity analysis in logic programsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/93548.9356425:6(174-188)Online publication date: 1-Jun-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/93548.93564
Chambers CUngar D(1990)Iterative type analysis and extended message splitting; optimizing dynamically-typed object-oriented programsACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/93548.9356225:6(150-164)Online publication date: 1-Jun-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/93548.93562
Cormack GWright A(1990)Type-dependent parameter inferenceACM SIGPLAN Notices10.1145/93548.9356025:6(127-136)Online publication date: 1-Jun-1990
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/93548.93560
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