[m-dev.] `highly ambiguous overloading' ??

[Ralph Becket]

> From: Fergus Henderson [mailto:fjh at cs.mu.OZ.AU] 
> Sent: 19 March 2001 18:42
> 
> It's mentioned briefly in my draft thesis ;-)

Or "The Apocrypha", as we like to think of it :)

> Peter Stuckey has proposed an alternative algorithm which 
> avoids the exponential complexity in most cases (it's not 
> possible to do it in polynomial time in the general case, at 
> least not unless P=NP). This algorithm treats type checking 
> as constraint solving, and solves the constraints by delaying 
> disjunctive constraints (overloading), and using constraint 
> propagation to eliminate them where possible; the algorithm 
> only resorts to searching as a last resort, if there are 
> disjunctive constraints remaining at the end which can't be 
> eliminated by constraint propagation.

This was the sort of thing I had in mind, but it's probably way
down on the list of priorities.  It's good to know what "highly
ambiguous overloading" is, though - that one's bitten me in the
past, too.  Perhaps -E could cause a precis of the explanation 
you gave to be included in the error report?

Cheers,

Ralph
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