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Article

Searching for type-error messages

Authors:

Benjamin S. Lerner,

Matthew Flower,

Craig ChambersAuthors Info & Claims

PLDI '07: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

Pages 425 - 434

https://doi.org/10.1145/1250734.1250783

Published: 10 June 2007 Publication History

Abstract

Advanced type systems often need some form of type inference to reduce the burden of explicit typing, but type inference often leads to poor error messages for ill-typed programs. This work pursues a new approach to constructing compilers and presenting type-error messages in which the type-checker itself does not produce the messages. Instead, it is an oracle for a search procedure that finds similar programs that do type-check. Our two-fold goal is to improve error messages while simplifying compiler construction. Our primary implementation and evaluation is for Caml, a language with full type inference. We also present a prototype for C++ template functions, where type instantiation is implicit. A key extension is making our approach robust even when the program has multiple independent type errors.

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Cited By

Kellogg MDaskiewicz DDuc Nguyen LAhmed MErnst M(2023)Pluggable Type Inference for Free2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186(1542-1554)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186
Gordon CYun C(2023)Error Localization for Sequential Effect SystemsStatic Analysis10.1007/978-3-031-44245-2_16(343-370)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44245-2_16
Sharrad JChitil O(2021)Refining the Delta Debugging of Type ErrorsProceedings of the 33rd Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages10.1145/3544885.3544888(10-19)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544885.3544888
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Searching for type-error messages
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software creation and management
    1. Software verification and validation
      1. Software defect analysis
        Software testing and debugging
  2. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers

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Information

Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

PLDI '07: Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 2007

508 pages

ISBN:9781595936332

DOI:10.1145/1250734

General Chair:
Jeanne Ferrante
University of California, San Diego, USA
,
Program Chair:
Kathryn S. McKinley
University of Texas at Austin, USA

ACM SIGPLAN Notices Volume 42, Issue 6
Proceedings of the 2007 PLDI conference
June 2007
491 pages
ISSN:0362-1340
EISSN:1558-1160
DOI:10.1145/1273442
Issue’s Table of Contents

Copyright © 2007 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 10 June 2007

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PLDI '07

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PLDI '07: ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

June 10 - 13, 2007

California, San Diego, USA

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Overall Acceptance Rate 406 of 2,067 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Kellogg MDaskiewicz DDuc Nguyen LAhmed MErnst M(2023)Pluggable Type Inference for Free2023 38th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186(1542-1554)Online publication date: 11-Sep-2023
https://doi.org/10.1109/ASE56229.2023.00186
Gordon CYun C(2023)Error Localization for Sequential Effect SystemsStatic Analysis10.1007/978-3-031-44245-2_16(343-370)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44245-2_16
Sharrad JChitil O(2021)Refining the Delta Debugging of Type ErrorsProceedings of the 33rd Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages10.1145/3544885.3544888(10-19)Online publication date: 1-Sep-2021
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3544885.3544888
Kazerounian MRen BFoster J(2020)Sound, heuristic type annotation inference for RubyProceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on Dynamic Languages10.1145/3426422.3426985(112-125)Online publication date: 17-Nov-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3426422.3426985
MacQueen DHarper RReppy J(2020)The history of Standard MLProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/33863364:HOPL(1-100)Online publication date: 12-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3386336
Sakkas GEndres MCosman BWeimer WJhala RDonaldson ATorlak E(2020)Type error feedback via analytic program repairProceedings of the 41st ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation10.1145/3385412.3386005(16-30)Online publication date: 11-Jun-2020
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3385412.3386005
Becker BDenny PPettit RBouchard DBouvier DHarrington BKamil AKarkare AMcDonald COsera PPearce JPrather JRößling GGiannakos MScharlau BMcDermott RPears ASabin M(2019)Compiler Error Messages Considered UnhelpfulProceedings of the Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3344429.3372508(177-210)Online publication date: 18-Dec-2019
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3344429.3372508
Chen SWu B(2019)Efficient Counter-factual Type Error Debugging2019 International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Software Engineering (TASE)10.1109/TASE.2019.00-13(99-106)Online publication date: Jul-2019
https://doi.org/10.1109/TASE.2019.00-13
Sharrad JChitil OWang M(2018)Delta Debugging Type Errors with a Blackbox CompilerProceedings of the 30th Symposium on Implementation and Application of Functional Languages10.1145/3310232.3310243(13-24)Online publication date: 5-Sep-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3310232.3310243
Lee JSong DSo SOh H(2018)Automatic diagnosis and correction of logical errors for functional programming assignmentsProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/32765282:OOPSLA(1-30)Online publication date: 24-Oct-2018
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3276528
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