Typing Haskell in Haskell

Abstract

Haskell benefits from a sophisticated type system, but implementors, programmers, and researchers suffer because it has no formal description. To remedy this shortcoming, we present a Haskell program that implements a Haskell typechecker, thus providing a mathematically rigorous specification in a notation that is familiar to Haskell users. We expect this program to fill a serious gap in current descriptions of Haskell, both as a starting point for discussions about existing features of the type system, and as a platform from which to explore new proposals.