Type Inference in Scheme Summary

[bartlett@decwrl.dec.com (Joel Bartlett)]

The question:

   I am interested in using type inference to get faster code out of my
   Scheme compiler.  I'd greatly appreciate pointers to any existing work in
   that area...

Responses:

You should look at my SPS (Semantic Prototyping System) which includes, among
other things, an ML-style type inference system for a pretty good chunk of
Scheme.  A hardcopy writeup is in the Proceedings of the 1984 SIGPLAN Compiler
Construction Conference.

Scheme84 and SPS are available on iuvax.cs.indiana.edu via ftp (login:
anonymous, with any password) as /usr/ftp/pub/scheme84 and
/usr/ftp/pub/SPS, respectively.

Mitchell Wand
College of Computer Science
Northeastern University
360 Huntington Avenue #161CN
Boston, MA 02115

CSNet:  wand@corwin.ccs.northeastern.edu

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Here is one of the definitive papers on Type Inference:

Robin Milner. "A Theory of Type Polymorphics in Programming"
_Journal of Computer and System Sciences_, 17 348-375 December 1978.

It describes his system of polymorphism in the language ML.

Jamey Hicks (jamey@xn.ll.mit.edu)

--

A type inference system for Common Lisp is described in "Lisp Pointers",
Vol 1, No. 2.  The author is Randall D. Beer (beer%case@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA).


Thanks for the pointers,

jfb