tym: Typed Matlab

Type of variables x and y can be any allowable type. If we are supposed to compile this function statically, we may have to choose the widest possible type for x and y. This type is an array of complex numbers. The result would be very inefficient code when parameters are of narrower type (e.g. Integers or even arrays of integers). In these cases they are actually wrapped as arrays of complex numbers. One way to tackle this problem is to use JIT compilers to compile the program or choose the best previously compiled version at runtime. However, this requires run-time overhead and can be really non-trivial. We would like to follow another path in this paper. We have developed a new language which is similar to Octave/MATLAB in many ways but has a less dynamic nature. In particular, variables must be declared (with their type) before they are defined or used and arrays must be allocated explicitly. We have called this language, tym (Typed MATLAB).