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Type Reconstruction for Type Classes1

Part of: JFP Research Articles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Tobias Nipkow  and
Christian Prehofer
Tobias Nipkow
Affiliation:
Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München, 80290 München, Germany. email: {nipkow, prehofer}@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
Christian Prehofer
Affiliation:
Institut für Informatik, Technische Universität München, 80290 München, Germany. email: {nipkow, prehofer}@informatik.tu-muenchen.de
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Abstract

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We study the type inference problem for a system with type classes as in the functional programming language Haskell. Type classes are an extension of ML-style polymorphism with overloading. We generalize Milner's work on polymorphism by introducing a separate context constraining the type variables in a typing judgement. This leads to simple type inference systems and algorithms which closely resemble those for ML. In particular, we present a new unification algorithm which is an extension of syntactic unification with constraint solving. The existence of principal types follows from an analysis of this unification algorithm.

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Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Functional Programming , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , April 1995 , pp. 201 - 224
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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