A system of constructor classes: overloading and implicit higher-order polymorphism

1995 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark P. Jones
Keyword(s):  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Natural Generalization ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
Effective Algorithm ◽  
Prototype Implementation ◽  
Type Classes

AbstractThis paper describes a flexible type system that combines overloading and higher-order polymorphism in an implicitly typed language using a system of constructor classes—a natural generalization of type classes in Haskell. We present a range of examples to demonstrate the usefulness of such a system. In particular, we show how constructor classes can be used to support the use of monads in a functional language. The underlying type system permits higher-order polymorphism but retains many of the attractive features that have made Hindley/Milner type systems so popular. In particular, there is an effective algorithm that can be used to calculate principal types without the need for explicit type or kind annotations. A prototype implementation has been developed providing, amongst other things, the first concrete implementation of monad comprehensions known to us at the time of writing.

scholarly journals Typing first-class continuations in ML

1993 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-484 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Harper ◽  
Bruce F. Duba ◽  
David Macqueen
Keyword(s):  
Operational Semantics ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
Type Assignment ◽  
Polymorphic Type ◽  
Alternative Type

AbstractAn extension of ML with continuation primitives similar to those found in Scheme is considered. A number of alternative type systems are discussed, and several programming examples are given. A continuation-based operational semantics is defined for a small, purely functional language, and the soundness of the Damas–Milner polymorphic type assignment system with respect to this semantics is proved. The full Damas–Milner type system is shown to be unsound in the presence of first-class continuations. Restrictions on polymorphism similar to those introduced in connection with reference types are shown to suffice for soundness.

scholarly journals Elaborating intersection and union types

2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 133-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOSHUA DUNFIELD
Keyword(s):  
Programming Languages ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Prototype Implementation ◽  
Value Evaluation ◽  
Source Program ◽  
Parametric Polymorphism ◽  
New Type ◽  
Dynamic Typing ◽  
System Feature

AbstractDesigning and implementing typed programming languages is hard. Every new type system feature requires extending the metatheory and implementation, which are often complicated and fragile. To ease this process, we would like to provide general mechanisms that subsume many different features. In modern type systems, parametric polymorphism is fundamental, but intersection polymorphism has gained little traction in programming languages. Most practical intersection type systems have supported onlyrefinement intersections, which increase the expressiveness of types (more precise properties can be checked) without altering the expressiveness of terms; refinement intersections can simply be erased during compilation. In contrast,unrestrictedintersections increase the expressiveness of terms, and can be used to encode diverse language features, promising an economy of both theory and implementation. We describe a foundation for compiling unrestricted intersection and union types: an elaboration type system that generates ordinary λ-calculus terms. The key feature is a Forsythe-like merge construct. With this construct, not all reductions of the source program preserve types; however, we prove that ordinary call-by-value evaluation of the elaborated program corresponds to a type-preserving evaluation of the source program. We also describe a prototype implementation and applications of unrestricted intersections and unions: records, operator overloading, and simulating dynamic typing.

scholarly journals Reachability types: tracking aliasing and separation in higher-order functional programs

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (OOPSLA) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Yuyan Bao ◽  
Guannan Wei ◽  
Oliver Bračevac ◽  
Yuxuan Jiang ◽  
Qiyang He ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Functional Programming ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Ownership Type ◽  
Ownership Transfer ◽  
Reachability Sets ◽  
Programming Patterns ◽  
New Type ◽  
Higher Order Functions

Ownership type systems, based on the idea of enforcing unique access paths, have been primarily focused on objects and top-level classes. However, existing models do not as readily reflect the finer aspects of nested lexical scopes, capturing, or escaping closures in higher-order functional programming patterns, which are increasingly adopted even in mainstream object-oriented languages. We present a new type system, λ * , which enables expressive ownership-style reasoning across higher-order functions. It tracks sharing and separation through reachability sets, and layers additional mechanisms for selectively enforcing uniqueness on top of it. Based on reachability sets, we extend the type system with an expressive flow-sensitive effect system, which enables flavors of move semantics and ownership transfer. In addition, we present several case studies and extensions, including applications to capabilities for algebraic effects, one-shot continuations, and safe parallelization.

scholarly journals Practical type inference for arbitrary-rank types

2007 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON PEYTON JONES ◽  
DIMITRIOS VYTINIOTIS ◽  
STEPHANIE WEIRICH ◽  
MARK SHIELDS
Keyword(s):  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Inference Engine ◽  
Type Inference ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
Local Type ◽  
Arbitrary Rank ◽  
Complete Type ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Higher Rank

AbstractHaskell's popularity has driven the need for ever more expressive type system features, most of which threaten the decidability and practicality of Damas-Milner type inference. One such feature is the ability to write functions with higher-rank types – that is, functions that take polymorphic functions as their arguments. Complete type inference is known to be undecidable for higher-rank (impredicative) type systems, but in practice programmers are more than willing to add type annotations to guide the type inference engine, and to document their code. However, the choice of just what annotations are required, and what changes are required in the type system and its inference algorithm, has been an ongoing topic of research. We take as our starting point a λ-calculus proposed by Odersky and Läufer. Their system supports arbitrary-rank polymorphism through the exploitation of type annotations on λ-bound arguments and arbitrary sub-terms. Though elegant, and more convenient than some other proposals, Odersky and Läufer's system requires many annotations. We show how to use local type inference (invented by Pierce and Turner) to greatly reduce the annotation burden, to the point where higher-rank types become eminently usable. Higher-rank types have a very modest impact on type inference. We substantiate this claim in a very concrete way, by presenting a complete type-inference engine, written in Haskell, for a traditional Damas-Milner type system, and then showing how to extend it for higher-rank types. We write the type-inference engine using a monadic framework: it turns out to be a particularly compelling example of monads in action. The paper is long, but is strongly tutorial in style. Although we use Haskell as our example source language, and our implementation language, much of our work is directly applicable to any ML-like functional language.

Monadic encapsulation of effects: a revised approach (extended version)

2001 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 591-627 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. MOGGI ◽  
AMR SABRY
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Operational Semantics ◽  
Type System ◽  
Lambda Calculus ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Functional Language ◽  
Simple Modification ◽  
Type Safety ◽  
Original Proposal ◽  
Type Parameter

Launchbury and Peyton Jones came up with an ingenious idea for embedding regions of imperative programming in a pure functional language like Haskell. The key idea was based on a simple modification of Hindley-Milner's type system. Our first contribution is to propose a more natural encapsulation construct exploiting higher-order kinds, which achieves the same encapsulation effect, but avoids the ad hoc type parameter of the original proposal. The second contribution is a type safety result for encapsulation of strict state using both the original encapsulation construct and the newly introduced one. We establish this result in a more expressive context than the original proposal, namely in the context of the higher-order lambda-calculus. The third contribution is a type safety result for encapsulation of lazy state in the higher-order lambda-calculus. This result resolves an outstanding open problem on which previous proof attempts failed. In all cases, we formalize the intended implementations as simple big-step operational semantics on untyped terms, which capture interesting implementation details not captured by the reduction semantics proposed previously.

Generics for the masses

2006 ◽  
Vol 16 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 451-483 ◽  
Author(s):  
RALF HINZE
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Data Type ◽  
Data Types ◽  
Type Classes ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Language Construct

A generic function is a function that can be instantiated on many data types to obtain data type specific functionality. Examples of generic functions are the functions that can be derived in Haskell, such as show, read, and ‘==’. The recent years have seen a number of proposals that support the definition of generic functions. Some of the proposals define new languages, some define extensions to existing languages. As a common characteristic none of the proposals can be made to work within Haskell 98: they all require something extra, either a more sophisticated type system or an additional language construct. The purpose of this paper is to show that one can, in fact, program generically within Haskell 98 obviating to some extent the need for fancy type systems or separate tools. Haskell's type classes are at the heart of this approach: they ensure that generic functions can be defined succinctly and, in particular, that they can be used painlessly. We detail three different implementations of generics both from a practical and from a theoretical perspective.

Building language towers with Ziggurat

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 707-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID FISHER ◽  
OLIN SHIVERS
Keyword(s):  
Assembly Language ◽  
Flow Analysis ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Higher Order ◽  
Language System ◽  
Static Semantics ◽  
Language Level ◽  
Concrete Syntax ◽  
Polymorphic Type

AbstractZiggurat is a meta-language system that permits programmers to develop Scheme-like macros for languages with nontrivial static semantics, such as C or Java (suitably encoded in an S-expression concrete syntax). Ziggurat permits language designers to construct ‘towers’ of language levels with macros; each level in the tower may have its own static semantics, such as type systems or flow analyses. Crucially, the static semantics of the languages at two adjacent levels in the tower can be connected, allowing improved reasoning power at a higher level to be reflected down to the static semantics of the language level below. We demonstrate the utility of the Ziggurat framework by implementing higher level language facilities as macros on top of an assembly language, utilizing static semantics such as termination analysis, a polymorphic type system and higher order flow analysis.

scholarly journals Automating Proof Steps of Progress Proofs: Comparing Vampire and Dafny

10.29007/5zjp ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Grewe ◽  
Sebastian Erdweg ◽  
Mira Mezini
Keyword(s):  
Formal Methods ◽  
Programming Language ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Domain Specific Languages ◽  
Smt Solver ◽  
Domain Specific ◽  
Efficient Type

\noindent Developing provably sound type systems is a non-trivial task which, as of today, typically requires expert skills in formal methods and a considerable amount of time. Our Veritas~\cite{GreweErdwegWittmannMezini15} project aims at providing support for the development of soundness proofs of type systems and efficient type checker implementations from specifications of type systems. To this end, we investigate how to best automate typical steps within type soundness proofs.\noindent In this paper, we focus on progress proofs for type systems of domain-specific languages. As a running example for such a type system, we model a subset SQL and augment it with a type system. We compare two different approaches for automating proof steps of the progress proofs for this type system against each other: firstly, our own tool Veritas, which translates proof goals and specifications automatically to TPTP~\cite{Sutcliffe98} and calls Vampire~\cite{KovacsV13} on them, and secondly, the programming language Dafny~\cite{Leino2010}, which translates proof goals and specifications to the intermediate verification language Boogie 2~\cite{Leino2008} and calls the SMT solver Z3~\cite{DeMoura2008} on them. We find that Vampire and Dafny are equally well-suited for automatically proving simple steps within progress proofs.

scholarly journals How to make ad hoc proof automation less ad hoc

2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 357-401 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGES GONTHIER ◽  
BETA ZILIANI ◽  
ALEKSANDAR NANEVSKI ◽  
DEREK DREYER
Keyword(s):  
Design Patterns ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Type System ◽  
Type Inference ◽  
Interactive Theorem Provers ◽  
Proof Automation ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Type Classes ◽  
Structure Programming ◽  
Base Logic

AbstractMost interactive theorem provers provide support for some form of user-customizable proof automation. In a number of popular systems, such as Coq and Isabelle, this automation is achieved primarily through tactics, which are programmed in a separate language from that of the prover's base logic. While tactics are clearly useful in practice, they can be difficult to maintain and compose because, unlike lemmas, their behavior cannot be specified within the expressive type system of the prover itself.We propose a novel approach to proof automation in Coq that allows the user to specify the behavior of custom automated routines in terms of Coq's own type system. Our approach involves a sophisticated application of Coq's canonical structures, which generalize Haskell type classes and facilitate a flexible style of dependently-typed logic programming. Specifically, just as Haskell type classes are used to infer the canonical implementation of an overloaded term at a given type, canonical structures can be used to infer the canonical proof of an overloaded lemma for a given instantiation of its parameters. We present a series of design patterns for canonical structure programming that enable one to carefully and predictably coax Coq's type inference engine into triggering the execution of user-supplied algorithms during unification, and we illustrate these patterns through several realistic examples drawn from Hoare Type Theory. We assume no prior knowledge of Coq and describe the relevant aspects of Coq type inference from first principles.

How to evaluate the performance of gradual type systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
BEN GREENMAN ◽  
ASUMU TAKIKAWA ◽  
MAX S. NEW ◽  
DANIEL FELTEY ◽  
ROBERT BRUCE FINDLER ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Type System ◽  
Type Systems ◽  
Relative Performance ◽  
Systematic Evaluation ◽  
Gradual Typing ◽  
The Absolute

Abstract A sound gradual type system ensures that untyped components of a program can never break the guarantees of statically typed components. This assurance relies on runtime checks, which in turn impose performance overhead in proportion to the frequency and nature of interaction between typed and untyped components. The literature on gradual typing lacks rigorous descriptions of methods for measuring the performance of gradual type systems. This gap has consequences for the implementors of gradual type systems and developers who use such systems. Without systematic evaluation of mixed-typed programs, implementors cannot precisely determine how improvements to a gradual type system affect performance. Developers cannot predict whether adding types to part of a program will significantly degrade (or improve) its performance. This paper presents the first method for evaluating the performance of sound gradual type systems. The method quantifies both the absolute performance of a gradual type system and the relative performance of two implementations of the same gradual type system. To validate the method, the paper reports on its application to 20 programs and 3 implementations of Typed Racket.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document