A theory of type polymorphism in programming

A theory of type polymorphism in programming (1978)

by Robin Milner

Venue:	Journal of Computer and System Sciences
Citations:	874 - 0 self

Datum	Value	Source
TITLE	A theory of type polymorphism in programming	INFERENCE
AUTHOR NAME	Robin Milner	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
AUTHOR AFFIL	Computer Science Department, Vm+ersity of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
ABSTRACT	The aim of this work is largely a practical one. A widely employed style of programming, particularly in structure-processing languages which impose no discipline of types, entails defining procedures which work well on objects of a wide variety. We present a formal type discipline for such polymorphic procedures in the context of a simple pro-gramming language, and a compile time type-checking algorithm w which enforces the discipline. A Semantic Soundness Theorem (based on a formal semantics for the language) states that well-type programs cannot “go wrong ” and a Syntactic Soundness Theorem states that if fl accepts a program then it is well typed. We also discuss extending these results to richer languages; a type-checking algorithm based on w is in fact already implemented and working, for the metalanguage ML in the Edinburgh LCF system, 1.	SVM HeaderParse 0.2
YEAR	1978	INFERENCE
VENUE	Journal of Computer and System Sciences	INFERENCE
VENUE TYPE	JOURNAL	INFERENCE
PAGES	348--375	INFERENCE
VOLUME	17	INFERENCE
CITATIONS	23 found	ParsCit 1.0