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I am pleased to announce the publication of my thesis:
POLYMORPHIC TYPE INFERENCE FOR OBJECT-ORIENTED PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
Andreas V. Hense
Universit"at des Saarlandes, 1994
(Supervisors: Prof. Dr. G. Smolka, Prof. Dr. R. Wilhelm)
Object-oriented programming languages enjoy an ever growing popularity.
These languages promise an increased productivity by favorizing code reuse.
Object-oriented languages undoubtedly have the reputation of leading to main-
tainable and expandable systems. However, they are not regarded as very safe
in the sense that object-oriented programs are free of errors. They are well-
suited for rapid prototyping, not for end products. A major part of the errors
in a dynamically typed language are type errors, in object-oriented terminol-
ogy they translate by "message not understood". Such errors cannot always
be eliminated by testing. Static type inference analyzes programs at compile
time and guarantees their absence at runtime. Whereas monomorphic type dis-
ciplines restrain reusability, polymorphic type inference provides the
necessary flexibility.
Despite its apparent urgency, the problem of inferring types for object-
oriented languages has still not been solved satisfactorily. This work is con-
cerned with the type inference for a complete object-oriented language, thus
showing the multiple facets of the problem. The type inferencer is of direct
practical use but the work shows the limitations of the chosen approach as well.
It is explored what can be done with pure inference, i.e. without having to rely
on type declarations. Pure type inference can be used for existing dynamically
typed languages and can be regarded as an optional analysis.
The object-oriented language was translated into an intermediate language
by an intelligent translation function. Thus, the most promising of the exist-
ing type inference results on small calculi could be chosen and adapted. The
polymorphic type discipline of this work comprises extensible record types, re-
cursive types, and imperative types. Since existing approaches were developed
further, the correctness was proven using order-sorted logic. Order-sorted logic
is used for the first time in this context. Its increased expressivity benefits
the formulation of the type inference algorithm.
The thesis is available as a book
title: POLYMORPHIC TYPE INFERENCE FOR OBJECT-ORIENTED
PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES
author: Andreas V. Hense
publisher: 1994, Pirrot Verlag
Trierer Str. 7
D-66125 Saarbruecken-Dudweiler
ISBN 3-930714-00-0
price: DM 30 (approx. 20 US $)