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First-class Polymorphism

I've been reading and trying to understand First-class Polymorphism with Type Inference (FCPWI); the "monads as first-class values" example in FCPWI was quite interesting. I was wondering if there were any languages that currently implement first-class polymorphism (FCP), and whether they support type inference.

From my searches, it would seem that MLF supports FCP, though MLF is still in its infancy; higher-rank types seem to have the same expressiveness as FCP, but I'm not certain as I'm still a type newbie. If that equivalency is valid, then the Morrow interpreter qualifies. Anything else?

The system described in FCPWI seems interesting, but I haven't seen it implemented anywhere, so I was just wondering what its limitations are.

By naasking at 2007-08-03 17:47 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 9949 reads

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Does this mean there aren't any?

Does the lack of responses mean there aren't any languages incorporating first-class polymorphism with type inference? I haven't really been able to find anything via google except what I cited, or I wouldn't have asked. Or is FCP perhaps not as interesting as I believe it to be?

By naasking at Sat, 2007-08-04 16:10 | login or register to post comments

OCaml, Haskell/GHC, Moscow ML

...all support first-class polymorphism in different forms (OCaml: records or objects with polymorphic fields; GHC: datatypes with polymorphic arguments, higher-ranked types; Moscow ML: first-class modules). Neither can infer it, though.

By Andreas Rossberg at Sat, 2007-08-04 17:57 | login or register to post comments

all support first-class

all support first-class polymorphism in different forms

I was aware of this, but I was under the impression that the first-class polymorphism as presented in the paper was more general than any of the languages mentioned in your post supported. Am I mistaken? Is type inference the only advantage of the system presented in the paper?

By naasking at Sat, 2007-08-04 19:14 | login or register to post comments

Advantages

AFAICS, it's only type inference and corresponding syntactic convenience (you don't need to inject/project polymorphic values). GHC also offers this with its higher-ranked types, and I believe the inference algorithm used there actually is much more powerful than what's in the above paper.

IIRC, the paper also adds first-class existential polymorphism. This is available in Haskell and with Moscow ML's first-class modules, but not in OCaml (you would have to encode it).

By Andreas Rossberg at Sun, 2007-08-05 11:00 | login or register to post comments

Check out Scala. If I

Check out Scala.

If I understand what FCP/TI is, then Scala has it.

By Akhilesh Mritunjai at Wed, 2007-08-08 07:45 | login or register to post comments

Some links

In the interests of keeping relevant stories together...

By Charles Stewart at Sun, 2009-07-19 05:05 | login or register to post comments