Abstract

Extensions of the ML type system, based on constrained type schemes, have been proposed for languages with overloading. Type inference in these systems requires solving the following satisfiability problem. Given a set of type assumptions C over finite types and a type basis A, is there is a substitution S that satisfies C in that A ` CS is derivable? Under arbitrary overloading, the problem is undecidable. Haskell limits overloading to a form similar to that proposed by Kaes called parametric overloading. We formally characterize parametric overloading in terms of a regular tree language and prove that although decidable, satisfiability is NP-hard when overloading is parametric. 1 Introduction A practical limitation of the ML type system is that it prohibits global overloading in a programming language by restricting to at most one the number of assumptions per identifier in a type context, a limitation noted by Milner himself [Mil78]. Suppose we wish to assert that a free identifier...

Citations