Principal signatures for higher-order program modules

  • Authors:
  • Mads Tofte

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • POPL '92 Proceedings of the 19th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
  • Year:
  • 1992

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Abstract

Under the Damas-Milner type discipline for functional languages, every expression has principal type, if it elaborates at all. In the type discipline for ML Modules, a signature expression has a principal signature, if it elaborates at all. However, while functions can be higher-order in ML, parameterised modules in ML are first-order only. We present a type discipline for a skeletal higher-order module language which has principal signatures. Sharing and multiple views of structures are handled in a manner which is compatible with the semantics of the first-order ML modules.