BibTeX
@TECHREPORT{Ditchfield94contextualpolymorphism,
author = {Glen Jeffrey Ditchfield},
title = {Contextual Polymorphism},
institution = {},
year = {1994}
}
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Abstract
Programming languages often provide for various sorts of static type checking as a way of detecting invalid programs. However, statically checked type systems often require unnecessarily specific type information, which leads to frustratingly inflexible languages. Polymorphic type systems restore flexibility by allowing entities to take on more than one type. This thesis discusses polymorphism in statically typed programming languages. It provides precise definitions of the term "polymorphism" and for its varieties, "ad-hoc polymorphism", "universal polymorphism", "inclusion polymorphism", and "parametric polymorphism", and surveys and compares many existing mechanisms for providing polymorphism in programming languages. Finally, it introduces a new polymorphism mechanism, contextual polymorphism. Contextual polymorphism is a variant of parametric polymorphism that is based on contexts, which are abstractions of collections of declarations, and assertions, which link polymorphic routin...
