Deriving Algorithms From Type Inference Systems: Application to Strictness Analysis

Abstract

The role of non-standard type inference in static program analysis has been much studied recently. Early work emphasised the efficiency of type inference algorithms and paid little attention to the correctness of the inference system. Recently more powerful inference systems have been investigated but the connection with efficient inference algorithms has been obscured. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first we show how to transform a program logic into an algorithm and, second, we introduce the notion of lazy types and show how to derive an efficient algorithm or strictness analysis.