A 3-part type inference engine

Abstract

Extending a subtyping-constraint-based type inference frame- work with conditional constraints and rows yields a powerful type inference engine. We illustrate this claim by proposing solutions to three delicate type inference problems: “accurate" pattern matchings, record concatenation, and “dynamic" messages. Until now, known solutions required significantly different techniques; our theoretical contribution is in using only a single (and simple) set of tools. On the practical side, this allows all three problems to benefit from a common set of constraint simplification techniques, leading to efficient solutions.