Sound Generic Java type inference

• To: types@cis.upenn.edu
• Subject: Sound Generic Java type inference
• From: Martin Odersky <martin.odersky@epfl.ch>
• Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 00:31:24 +0100
• Reply-To: martin.odersky@epfl.ch

Dear types researchers:

Alan Jeffrey has shown in a previous note to the types mailing list
that the original scheme for local type inference used in GJ was
unsound. The unsoundness was caused by the treatment of polymorphic
methods like Nil(), where the method arguments alone are not
sufficient to determine a type parameter instantiation. Prompted by
this observaton, I have been working on a new scheme for type
parameter inference which does not share that problem. The new scheme
is described in a note at

	lampwww.epfl.ch/~odersky/ftp/local-ti.ps

It has been implemented in the javac compiler. We hope to be able to
make that compiler available in the near future.

Cheers

 -- Martin
 

========================================================================= 
Prof. Martin Odersky                                 Tel: +41 21 693 6863
Computer Science Department                          Fax: +41 21 693 6660
Programming Methods Laboratory (LAMP)
EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne
IN (Ecublens)                                http://diwww.epfl.ch/~odersky
CH 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland               mailto: Martin.Odersky@epfl.ch
 

• Prev: RE: Decidable polymorphic recursion?
• Next: Preprint: Semantic Analysis of Normalisation.
• Index(es):
  • Main
  • Thread