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Type inference in the presence of type abstraction

Author:

H.-J. BoehmAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '89: Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 1989 conference on Programming language design and implementation

Pages 192 - 206

https://doi.org/10.1145/73141.74835

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

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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Barendregt HHemerik K(2005)Types in lambda calculi and programming languagesESOP '9010.1007/3-540-52592-0_53(1-35)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52592-0_53
Pierce BTurner DMacQueen DCardelli L(1998)Local type inferenceProceedings of the 25th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages10.1145/268946.268967(252-265)Online publication date: 21-Jan-1998
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/268946.268967
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Index Terms

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

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cover image ACM Conferences

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

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

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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Published: 21 June 1989

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PLDI89: Programming Language Design & Implementation

June 19 - 23, 1989

Oregon, Portland, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 406 of 2,067 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

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
Barendregt HHemerik K(2005)Types in lambda calculi and programming languagesESOP '9010.1007/3-540-52592-0_53(1-35)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2005
https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-52592-0_53
Pierce BTurner DMacQueen DCardelli L(1998)Local type inferenceProceedings of the 25th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages10.1145/268946.268967(252-265)Online publication date: 21-Jan-1998
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/268946.268967
Odersky MLäufer KBoehm HSteele G(1996)Putting type annotations to workProceedings of the 23rd ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages10.1145/237721.237729(54-67)Online publication date: 1-Jan-1996
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/237721.237729
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
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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
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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
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