A hierarchical type system for imperative programming languages gives rise to various computational problems, such as type equivalence, type ordering, etc. We present a particular class of finite automata which are shown to be isomorphic to type equations. All the relevant type concepts turn out to have well-known automata analogues, such as language equality, language inclusion, etc. This provides optimal or best known algorithms for the type system, by a process of translating type equations to automata, solving the analogous problem, and translating the result back to type equations. Apart from suggesting an implementation, this connection lends a certain naturality to our type system. We also introduce a very general form of extended (recursive) type equations which are explained in terms of (monotone) alternating automata. Since types are simply equationally defined trees, these results may have wider applications.
Types and automata
