A sort inference algorithm for the polyadic &pgr;-calculus

  • Authors:
  • Simon J. Gay

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • POPL '93 Proceedings of the 20th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages
  • Year:
  • 1993

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Abstract

In Milner's polyadic &pgr;-calculus there is a notion of sorts which is analogous to the notion of types in functional programming. As a well-typed program applies functions to arguments in a consistent way, a well-sorted process uses communication channels in a consistent way. An open problem is whether there is an algorithm to infer sorts in the &pgr;-calculus in the same way that types can be inferred in functional programming. Here we solve the problem by presenting an algorithm which infers the most general sorting for a process in the first-order calculus, and proving its correctness. The algorithm is similar in style to those used for Hindley-Milner type inference in functional languages.