Local type inference

  • Authors:
  • Benjamin C. Pierce;David N. Turner

  • Affiliations:
  • Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia;An Teallach, Ltd., Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

  • Venue:
  • ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
  • Year:
  • 2000

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Abstract

We study two partial type inference methods for a language combining subtyping and impredicative polymorphism. Both methods are local in the sense that missing annotations are recovered using only information from adjacent nodes in the syntax tree, without long-distance constraints such as unification variables. One method infers type arguments in polymorphic applications using a local constraint solver. The other infers annotations on bound variables in function abstractions by propagating type constraints downward from enclosing application nodes. We motivate our design choices by a statistical analysis of the uses of type inference in a sizable body of existing ML code.