[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
New paper: How Good is Local Type Inference?
We are pleased to announce a report on our experiences with an
implementation of a local type inference algorithm. It is available
through:
http://www.yl.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~haruo/papers/hgilti.ps.gz
or http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/papers/hgilti.ps.gz
Regards,
Haruo Hosoya
Benjamin Pierce
------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOW GOOD IS LOCAL TYPE INFERENCE?
Haruo Hosoya and Benjamin Pierce
Abstract:
A partial type inference technique should come with a simple and
precise specification, so that users predict its behavior and
understand the error messages it produces. Local type inference
techniques attain this simplicity by inferring missing type
information only from the types of adjacent syntax nodes, without
using global mechanisms such as unification variables.
The paper reports on our experience with programming in a
full-featured programming language including higher-order
polymorphism, subtyping, parametric datatypes, and local type
inference. On the positive side, our experiments on several
nontrivial examples confirm previous hopes for the practicality of the
type inference method. On the negative side, some proposed extensions
mitigating known expressiveness problems turn out to be unsatisfactory
on close examination.