language: en

Unification and Polymorphism in Region Inference

Mads Tofte,
Department of Computer Science, University of Copenhagen
Lars Birkedal,
School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University

[Dedicated to Robin Milner on the occasion of his 60th birthday.]

Abstract Region Inference is a technique for inferring lifetimes of values in strict, higher-order programming languages such as Standard ML. The purpose of this paper is to show how ideas from Milner's polymorphic type discipline can serve as a basis for region inference, even in the presence of a limited form of polymorphic recursion.

1 Introduction