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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.

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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