Precise Concrete Type Inference for Object-Oriented Languages

Abstract

Concrete type information is invaluable for program optimization. The determination of concrete types in object-oriented languages is a flow sensitive global data flow problem. It is made difficult by dynamic dispatch (virtual function invocation) and first class functions (and selectors)—the very program structures for whose optimization its results are most critical. Previous work has shown that constraint-based type inference systems can be used to safely approximate concrete types [15], but their use can be expensive and their results imprecise.