Simple Imperative Polymorphism

This paper describes a simple extension of the Hindley-Milner polymorphic type discipline to call-by-value languages that incorporate imperative features like references, exceptions, and continuations. This extension sacrifices the ability to type every purely functional expression that is typable in the Hindley-Milner system. In return, it assigns the same type to functional and imperative implementations of the same abstraction. Hence with a module system that separates specifications from implementations, imperative features can be freely used to implement polymorphic specifications. A study of a number of ML programs shows that the inability to type all Hindley-Milner typable expressions seldom impacts realistic programs. Furthermore, most programs that are rendered untypable by the new system can be easily repaired.