Simplifying subtyping constraints

Abstract

This paper studies type inference for a functional, ML-style language with subtyping, and focuses on the issue of simplifying inferred constraint sets. We propose a powerful notion of entailment between constraint sets, as well as an algorithm to check it, which we prove to be sound. The algorithm, although very powerful in practice, is not complete. We also introduce two new typing rules which allow simplifying constraint sets. These rules give very good practical results. © 1996 ACM.