Type Inference in Prolog: A New Approach

Corsini, M.-M. and K. Musumbu, Type inference in Prolog: a new approach, Theoretical Computer Science 119 (1993) 23-38. This paper presents a new approach to type inference of Prolog programs. The novelty is in the fact that we only require the existence of a trpe domain 9 with a few primitive operations such as the abstract unification of elements of 3, and operations allowing the construction and the extraction of types. We focus on the derivation of accurate sharing information that we prove correct. The derivation process is designed as an application of a recent method for global analysis for logic programs, formalized by an abstract interpretation framework. The framework ensures correctness and termination of the inferred properties if certain requirements are satisfied.