A calculus for constraint-based flow typing

  • Authors:
  • David J. Pearce

  • Affiliations:
  • Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 15th Workshop on Formal Techniques for Java-like Programs
  • Year:
  • 2013

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Flow typing offers an alternative to traditional Hindley-Milner type inference. A key distinction is that variables may have different types at different program points. Flow typing systems are typically formalised in the style of a dataflow analysis. In the presence of loops, this requires a fix-point computation over typing environments. Unfortunately, for some flow typing problems, the standard iterative fix-point computation may not terminate. We formalise such a problem we encountered in developing the Whiley programming language, and present a novel constraint-based solution which is guaranteed to terminate. This provides a foundation for others when developing such flow typing systems.