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Do I need a forall if type parameters are syntactically distinguishable from type constructors?

My type-fu is too weak for TAPL atm, which probably has the answer to this --

I don't fully understand when and why explicit forall/quantification of type parameters is needed.

In Java for example, type parameters in class definitions are automatically quantified, whereas type parameters in polymorphic methods need an explicit quantification.

I wonder if explicit quantification is needed because Java uses the same syntax for type constructors (classes) and type parameters?

If type parameters are distinguishable from classes syntactically, is a forall then ever needed?

By Manuel J. Simoni at 2010-09-05 14:02 | LtU Forum | 3 comments | other blogs | 5159 reads