Abstract
This paper presents a flexible type system developed for an axiomatic specification language. The type system can be dynamically adapted to different application areas. In particular, it allows the modelling of different kinds of polymorphism, like type classes or subtyping. The type system is based on the concept of qualified types. It allows one to abstract from concrete types by using type variables and to qualify these type variables by type predicates. The properties of the type predicates are described by a specification language based on Horn clauses. The notion of well-typedness is defined via a type inference calculus. We investigate the implementation of the type inference calculus and present an inference algorithm which splits into two phases. The first phase checks the well-formedness of the given term and computes the necessary type predicate restrictions, The second phase uses resolution to prove the computed restrictions to be correct with respect to the type predicate specification. We show that the inference algorithm is correct and complete with respect to the type inference calculus.
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© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Nazareth, D. (1996). Specifying type systems. In: Hanus, M., Rodríguez-Artalejo, M. (eds) Algebraic and Logic Programming. ALP 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1139. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61735-3_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61735-3_21
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