research-article

Finding minimum type error sources

Authors:

Zvonimir Pavlinovic,

Thomas WiesAuthors Info & Claims

ACM SIGPLAN Notices, Volume 49, Issue 10

Pages 525 - 542

https://doi.org/10.1145/2714064.2660230

Published: 15 October 2014 Publication History

Abstract

Automatic type inference is a popular feature of functional programming languages. If a program cannot be typed, the compiler typically reports a single program location in its error message. This location is the point where the type inference failed, but not necessarily the actual source of the error. Other potential error sources are not even considered. Hence, the compiler often misses the true error source, which increases debugging time for the programmer. In this paper, we present a general framework for automatic localization of type errors. Our algorithm finds all minimum error sources, where the exact definition of minimum is given in terms of a compiler-specific ranking criterion. Compilers can use minimum error sources to produce more meaningful error reports, and for automatic error correction. Our approach works by reducing the search for minimum error sources to an optimization problem that we formulate in terms of weighted maximum satisfiability modulo theories (MaxSMT). The reduction to weighted MaxSMT allows us to build on SMT solvers to support rich type systems and at the same time abstract from the concrete criterion that is used for ranking the error sources. We have implemented an instance of our framework targeted at Hindley-Milner type systems and evaluated it on existing OCaml benchmarks for type error localization. Our evaluation shows that our approach has the potential to significantly improve the quality of type error reports produced by state of the art compilers.

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Cited By

Lee JSong DSo SOh H(2018)Automatic diagnosis and correction of logical errors for functional programming assignmentsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32765282:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3276528
Wu BCampora III JChen S(2017)Learning user friendly type-error messagesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31339301:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3133930
Wu BChen S(2017)How type errors were fixed and what students did?Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31339291:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3133929
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Index Terms

Finding minimum type error sources
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
2. Theory of computation
  1. Semantics and reasoning
    1. Program reasoning
      1. Program analysis
    2. Program semantics

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Finding minimum type error sources
OOPSLA '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages & Applications

Automatic type inference is a popular feature of functional programming languages. If a program cannot be typed, the compiler typically reports a single program location in its error message. This location is the point where the type inference failed, ...
Discriminative sum types locate the source of type errors

We propose a type system for locating the source of type errors in an applied lambda calculus with ML-style polymorphism. The system is based on discriminative sum types---known from work on soft typing---with annotation subtyping and recursive types. ...
Discriminative sum types locate the source of type errors
ICFP '03: Proceedings of the eighth ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming

We propose a type system for locating the source of type errors in an applied lambda calculus with ML-style polymorphism. The system is based on discriminative sum types---known from work on soft typing---with annotation subtyping and recursive types. ...

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Published In

cover image ACM SIGPLAN Notices

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 49, Issue 10

OOPSLA '14

October 2014

907 pages

ISSN:0362-1340

EISSN:1558-1160

DOI:10.1145/2714064

Editor:
Andy Gill
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS

Issue’s Table of Contents

OOPSLA '14: Proceedings of the 2014 ACM International Conference on Object Oriented Programming Systems Languages & Applications
October 2014
946 pages
ISBN:9781450325851
DOI:10.1145/2660193
General Chair:
Andrew Black
Portland State University, USA
,
Program Chair:
Todd Millstein
University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Copyright © 2014 ACM.

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Association for Computing Machinery

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Publication History

Published: 15 October 2014

Published in SIGPLAN Volume 49, Issue 10

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Cited By

Lee JSong DSo SOh H(2018)Automatic diagnosis and correction of logical errors for functional programming assignmentsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32765282:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3276528
Wu BCampora III JChen S(2017)Learning user friendly type-error messagesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31339301:OOPSLA(1-29)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3133930
Wu BChen S(2017)How type errors were fixed and what students did?Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/31339291:OOPSLA(1-27)Online publication date: 12-Oct-2017
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3133929
Pradel MSchuh PSen K(2015)TypeDevil: Dynamic Type Inconsistency Analysis for JavaScript2015 IEEE/ACM 37th IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering10.1109/ICSE.2015.51(314-324)Online publication date: May-2015
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2015.51
Reinking APiskac R(2015)A Type-Directed Approach to Program RepairComputer Aided Verification10.1007/978-3-319-21690-4_35(511-517)Online publication date: 16-Jul-2015
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21690-4_35
Zhao EMaroof RDukkipati ABlinn APan ZOmar C(2024)Total Type Error Localization and Recovery with HolesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36329108:POPL(2041-2068)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
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Karimipour NPham JClapp LSridharan MChandra SBlincoe KTonella P(2023)Practical Inference of Nullability TypesProceedings of the 31st ACM Joint European Software Engineering Conference and Symposium on the Foundations of Software Engineering10.1145/3611643.3616326(1395-1406)Online publication date: 30-Nov-2023
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Lazarek LGreenman BFelleisen MDimoulas C(2023)How to Evaluate Blame for Gradual Types, Part 2Proceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36078367:ICFP(159-186)Online publication date: 31-Aug-2023
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Kellogg MDaskiewicz DDuc Nguyen LAhmed MErnst M(2023)Pluggable Type Inference for Free2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186(1542-1554)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186
Gordon CYun C(2023)Error Localization for Sequential Effect SystemsStatic Analysis10.1007/978-3-031-44245-2_16(343-370)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2023
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