Invited Paper: Conjunctive Types and Algol-like Languages (at LICS 1987)

Authors: John C. Reynolds

Abstract

The idea of conjuctive types, i.e. that an identifier or phrase can simultaneously possess several types, originated in the work of Coppo and Dezani, who devised a conjunctive-type discipline for the un-typed lambda calculus. They showed that this discipline provides a model of the language and, as a corollary, that there is no algorithm for type inference.
This result seems to have discouraged the use of conjunctive types in practical programming languages; yet, it is no barrier to their use in explicitly typed languages. We will explore the application of conjunctive types to Algol-like languages and demonstrate that they can make such languages both simpler and more flexible.

BibTeX

  @InProceedings{Reynolds-ConjunctiveTypesand,
    author = 	 {John C. Reynolds},
    title = 	 {Conjunctive Types and Algol-like Languages},
    booktitle =  {Proceedings of the Second Annual IEEE Symposium on Logic in Computer Science (LICS 1987)},
    year =	 {1987},
    month =	 {June}, 
    pages =      {119--119},
    location =   {Ithaca, NY, USA}, 
    note =       {Invited Talk},
    publisher =	 {IEEE Computer Society Press}
  }