Typing the Untypeable in Erlang - A static type system for Erlang using Partial Evaluation

Abstract

Erlang is a dynamically typed concurrent functional programming language popular for its use in distributed applications. Being a dynamically typed language by design, the Erlang compiler allows the successful compilation and execution of many programs which would be rejected by a type checker of a statically typed language. This idiosyncrasy of Erlang makes it difficult to retrofit static type checking technology onto the language. In this thesis, we develop a static type system suitable for Erlang using a program specialization technique called partial evaluation.