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How to make ad-hoc polymorphism less ad hoc

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S. BlottAuthors Info & Claims

POPL '89: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

Pages 60 - 76

https://doi.org/10.1145/75277.75283

Published: 03 January 1989 Publication History

Abstract

This paper presents type classes, a new approach to ad-hoc polymorphism. Type classes permit overloading of arithmetic operators such as multiplication, and generalise the “eqtype variables” of Standard ML. Type classes extend the Hindley/Milner polymorphic type system, and provide a new approach to issues that arise in object-oriented programming, bounded type quantification, and abstract data types. This paper provides an informal introduction to type classes, and defines them formally by means of type inference rules.

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Cited By

Lehmann NKurashige CAkiti NKrishnakumar NJhala R(2025)Generic Refinement TypesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048859:POPL(1446-1474)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704885
Baanen A(2025)Use and Abuse of Instance Parameters in the Lean Mathematical LibraryJournal of Automated Reasoning10.1007/s10817-024-09712-769:1Online publication date: 1-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10817-024-09712-7
Ye WOliveira BToro M(2024)Merging Gradual TypingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897348:OOPSLA2(648-676)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689734
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Index Terms

How to make ad-hoc polymorphism less ad hoc
1. Software and its engineering
  1. Software notations and tools
    1. Compilers
      1. Translator writing systems and compiler generators
    2. General programming languages
      1. Language features
      2. Language types

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cover image ACM Conferences

POPL '89: Proceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN-SIGACT symposium on Principles of programming languages

January 1989

352 pages

ISBN:0897912942

DOI:10.1145/75277

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CORPORATE New York, NY Association for Computing Machinery

Copyright © 1989 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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Published: 03 January 1989

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January 11 - 13, 1989

Texas, Austin, USA

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POPL '89 Paper Acceptance Rate 30 of 191 submissions, 16%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 860 of 4,328 submissions, 20%

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Cited By

Lehmann NKurashige CAkiti NKrishnakumar NJhala R(2025)Generic Refinement TypesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/37048859:POPL(1446-1474)Online publication date: 9-Jan-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3704885
Baanen A(2025)Use and Abuse of Instance Parameters in the Lean Mathematical LibraryJournal of Automated Reasoning10.1007/s10817-024-09712-769:1Online publication date: 1-Mar-2025
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1007/s10817-024-09712-7
Ye WOliveira BToro M(2024)Merging Gradual TypingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897348:OOPSLA2(648-676)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689734
Lobo-Vesga ERusso AGaboardi MCortiñas C(2024)Sensitivity by ParametricityProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36897268:OOPSLA2(415-441)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3689726
Racordon DLaemmel RPereira JMosses P(2024)Type Checking with Rewriting RulesProceedings of the 17th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Software Language Engineering10.1145/3687997.3695640(171-183)Online publication date: 17-Oct-2024
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Racordon DFlesselle EBovel MErtl MKirsch C(2024)Existential Containers in ScalaProceedings of the 21st ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Managed Programming Languages and Runtimes10.1145/3679007.3685056(55-64)Online publication date: 13-Sep-2024
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Fissore DTassi E(2024)Higher-Order unification for free!: Reusing the meta-language unification for the object languageProceedings of the 26th International Symposium on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming10.1145/3678232.3678233(1-13)Online publication date: 9-Sep-2024
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Kovács A(2024)Closure-Free Functional Programming in a Two-Level Type TheoryProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36746488:ICFP(659-692)Online publication date: 15-Aug-2024
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Lutze MMadsen M(2024)Associated Effects: Flexible Abstractions for Effectful ProgrammingProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36563938:PLDI(394-416)Online publication date: 20-Jun-2024
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Zhao EMaroof RDukkipati ABlinn APan ZOmar C(2024)Total Type Error Localization and Recovery with HolesProceedings of the ACM on Programming Languages10.1145/36329108:POPL(2041-2068)Online publication date: 5-Jan-2024
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