Polynomial Size Analysis of First-Order Functions

We present a size-aware type system for first-order shapely function definitions. Here, a function definition is called shapely when the size of the result is determined exactly by a polynomial in the sizes of the arguments. Examples of shapely function definitions may be matrix multiplication and the Cartesian product of two lists. The type checking problem for the type system is shown to be undecidable in general. We define a natural syntactic restriction such that the type checking becomes decidable, even though size polynomials are not necessarily linear or monotonic. Furthermore, a method that infers polynomial size dependencies for a non-trivial class of function definitions is suggested.1

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: TLCA
• Authors: Olha Shkaravska, Ron van Kesteren, Marko C. J. D. van Eekelen
• Keywords: Function Definitions, Theoretical Computer Science, TLCA 2007, Type Checking, first-order Shapely Function