research-article

Practical, pluggable types

Authors:

Niklaus Haldiman,

Oscar NierstraszAuthors Info & Claims

ICDL '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Dynamic languages: in conjunction with the 15th International Smalltalk Joint Conference 2007

Pages 183 - 204

https://doi.org/10.1145/1352678.1352690

Published: 25 August 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Most languages fall into one of two camps: either they adopt a unique, static type system, or they abandon static type-checks for runtime checks. Pluggable types blur this division by (i) making static type systems optional, and (ii) supporting a choice of type systems for reasoning about different kinds of static properties. Dynamic languages can then benefit from static-checking without sacrificing dynamic features or committing to a unique, static type system. But the overhead of adopting pluggable types can be very high, especially if all existing code must be decorated with type annotations before any type-checking can be performed. We propose a practical and pragmatic approach to introduce pluggable type systems to dynamic languages. First of all, only annotated code is type-checked. Second, limited type inference is performed on unannotated code to reduce the number of reported errors. Finally, external annotations can be used to type third-party code. We present TypePlug, a Smalltalk implementation of our framework, and report on experience applying the framework to three different pluggable type systems.

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Cited By

Haldiman NDenker MNierstrasz O(2018)Practical, pluggable types for a dynamic languageComputer Languages, Systems and Structures10.1016/j.cl.2008.06.00335:1(48-62)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cl.2008.06.003
Milojković NGhafari MNierstrasz OScanniello GLo DSerebrenik A(2017)Exploiting type hints in method argument names to improve lightweight type inferenceProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1109/ICPC.2017.33(77-87)Online publication date: 20-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICPC.2017.33
Milojković NNierstrasz OVisser EMurphy-Hill ELopes C(2016)Exploring cheap type inference heuristics in dynamically typed languagesProceedings of the 2016 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/2986012.2986017(43-56)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2986012.2986017
Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Other conferences

ICDL '07: Proceedings of the 2007 international conference on Dynamic languages: in conjunction with the 15th International Smalltalk Joint Conference 2007

August 2007

254 pages

ISBN:9781605580845

DOI:10.1145/1352678

Conference Chairs:
Serge Demeyer
University of Antwerp
,
Jean-François Perrot
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris

Copyright © 2007 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: 25 August 2007

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Swiss National Science Foundation

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ICDL '07

ICDL '07: Proceedings of the 2007 International Conference on Dynamic Languages

August 25 - 31, 2007

Lugano, Switzerland

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ICDL '07 Paper Acceptance Rate 11 of 16 submissions, 69%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 11 of 16 submissions, 69%

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Cited By

Haldiman NDenker MNierstrasz O(2018)Practical, pluggable types for a dynamic languageComputer Languages, Systems and Structures10.1016/j.cl.2008.06.00335:1(48-62)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1016/j.cl.2008.06.003
Milojković NGhafari MNierstrasz OScanniello GLo DSerebrenik A(2017)Exploiting type hints in method argument names to improve lightweight type inferenceProceedings of the 25th International Conference on Program Comprehension10.1109/ICPC.2017.33(77-87)Online publication date: 20-May-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/ICPC.2017.33
Milojković NNierstrasz OVisser EMurphy-Hill ELopes C(2016)Exploring cheap type inference heuristics in dynamically typed languagesProceedings of the 2016 ACM International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software10.1145/2986012.2986017(43-56)Online publication date: 20-Oct-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2986012.2986017
Xiang JKnight JSullivan K(2016)Synthesis of Logic InterpretationsProceedings of the 2016 IEEE 17th International Symposium on High Assurance Systems Engineering (HASE)10.1109/HASE.2016.32(114-121)Online publication date: 7-Jan-2016
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1109/HASE.2016.32

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