77 lines
4.3 KiB
TeX
77 lines
4.3 KiB
TeX
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\section{Related Work}
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Igarashi et al \cite{FJ} define Featherweight Java
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and its generic sibling, Featherweight Generic Java. Their language is
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a functional calculus reduced to the bare essentials, they develop the full metatheory, they
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support generics, and study the type erasing transformation used by
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the Java compiler. Stadelmeier et. al. extends this approach by global type
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inference \cite{TIforFGJ}.
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\subsection{Wildcards in formal Java models}
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Wildcards are first described in a research paper in \cite{addingWildcardsToJava}. In
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\cite{TEP05} the Featherweight Java-Calculus \textsf{Wild~ FJ} is introduced. It
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contains a formal description of wildcards. The Java Language Specification
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\cite{GoJoStBrBuSm23} refers to \textsf{Wild~FJ} for the introduction of
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wildcards. In \cite{aModelForJavaWithWildcards} a formal model based of explicite existential types
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is introduced and proven as sound. Additionally, for a subset of Java a
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translation to the formal model is given, such that this subset is proven as
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sound. In \cite{WildcardsNeedWitnessProtection} another core calculus is
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introduced, which is proven as
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sound, too. In this paper it is shown that the unsoundness of Java which is
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discovered in \cite{AT16} is avoidable, even in the absence of nullness-aware type
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system. In \cite{TamingWildcards} finally a framework is presented which combines
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use-site variance (wildcards as in Java) and definition-site variance (as in Scala). For
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instance, it can be used to add use-site variance to Scala and extend the Java
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type system to infer the definition-site variance.
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Our calculus is mixture ...
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\subsection{Type inference}
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Some object-oriented languages like Scala, C\#, and Java perform
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\emph{local} type inference \cite{PT98,OZZ01}. Local type
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inference means that missing type annotations are recovered using only
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information from adjacent nodes in the syntax tree without long distance
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constraints. For instance, the type of a variable initialized with a
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non-functional expression or the return type of a method can be
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inferred. However, method argument types, in particular for recursive
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methods, cannot be inferred by local type inference.
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Milner's algorithm $\mathcal{W}$ \cite{DBLP:journals/jcss/Milner78} is
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the gold standard for global type inference for languages with
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parametric polymorphism, which is used by ML-style languages. The fundamental idea
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of the algorithm is to enforce type equality by many-sorted type
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unification \cite{Rob65,MM82}. This approach is effective and results
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in so-called principal types because many-sorted unification is
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unitary, which means that there is at most one most general result.
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Pl\"umicke \cite{Plue07_3} presents a first attempt to adopt Milner's
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approach to Java. However, the presence of subtyping means that type
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unification is no longer unitary, but still finitary. Thus, there is
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no longer a single most general type, but any type is an instance of a
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finite set of maximal types (for more details see Section
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\ref{sec:unification}). Further work by the same author
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\cite{plue15_2,plue17_2},
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refines this approach by moving to a constraint-based algorithm and by
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considering lambda expressions and Scale-like function types.
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Pluemicke has a different approach to introduce wildcards in \cite{plue09_1}. He
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allows wildcards as any subsitution for type variables and disclaim the
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capture conversion. Instead he extended
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the subtyping ordering such that for $\theta \sub \theta' \sub \theta''$ holds
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indeed the transitiv closure of $\QMextends{\theta} \sub \theta'$ and $\theta' \sub
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\QMsuper{\theta''}$ but not the reflexive closure. He gave a type unification
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algorithm for this type system, which he proved as sound and complete.
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The problem of his type system is in the lossing reflexivity as shown in
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example \ref{intro-example1}. First approaches to solve this problem he gave in
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\cite{plue24_1}, where he fixes that no pairwise different nodes in the
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abstract syntax gets the same type variable and that no pairwise different type
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variables are equalized. In \cite{PH23} he showed how his type inference
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algorithm suffices theese properties.
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In Pl\"umicke's work there is indeed a formal definition of the subtying
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ordering and a correctness proof of the type unification algorithms but no
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soundness proof of the type system, itself. Therefore we choose for our type
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inference algorithms with wildcars the approach of ???????
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