[mercury-users] literature polymorphic recursive calls

[Tom Schrijvers]

> > I am looking for literature about a particular aspect of Mercury's type
> > inference, namely the way it deals with polymorphic recursive calls. Is
> > there some documentation about the iteration limit and what recursive
> > calls lead to infinite types? Are there any new or upcoming developments
> > on this account?
>
> The best document on the subject would be David Jeffrey's Ph.D.
> dissertation, "Expressive type systems for logic programming languages"
> http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/research/mercury/information/papers.html#dgj-thesis-final

Thanks for this pointer, Ralph. I must admit that I had already looked at
this text. As far as I can see it does not provide any details about the
actual type inference; it mainly presents the type system itself. I was
hoping for a text that focuses on the inference and explains the
recursive calls issue.

> We don't have any current plans to extend the type system other than to
> add constructor classes to the type class system.  We have discussed
> moving to a constraint-based approach to type analysis, but have neither
> the need nor the money to justify the work at present!

Thanks for the information. A constraint-based approach as in Chameleon
would seem attractive for Mercury, no?

Tom

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