Content area

Abstract

Traditional implementations of strongly-typed functional programming languages often miss the root cause of type errors. As a consequence, type error messages are often misleading and confusing - particularly for students learning such a language. We describe Tyro, a type error localization tool which determines the optimal source of an error for ill-typed programs following fundamental ideas by Pavlinovic et al. : we first translate typing constraints into SMT (Satisfiability Modulo Theories) using an intermediate representation which is more readable than the actual SMT encoding; during this phase we apply a new encoding for polymorphic types. Second, we translate our intermediate representation into an actual SMT encoding and take advantage of recent advancements in off-the-shelf SMT solvers to effectively find optimal error sources for ill-typed programs. Our design maintains the separation of heuristic and search also present in prior and similar work. In addition, our architecture design increases modularity, re-usability, and trust in the overall architecture using an intermediate representation to facilitate the safe generation of the SMT encoding. We believe this design principle will apply to many other tools that leverage SMT solvers. Our experimental evaluation reinforces that the SMT approach finds accurate error sources using both expert-labeled programs and an automated method for larger-scale analysis. Compared to prior work, Tyro lays the basis for large-scale evaluation of error localization techniques, which can be integrated into programming environments and enable us to understand the impact of precise error messages for students in practice.

Details

1009240
Identifier / keyword
Title
Modernizing SMT-Based Type Error Localization
Publication title
arXiv.org; Ithaca
Publication year
2024
Publication date
Aug 16, 2024
Section
Computer Science
Publisher
Cornell University Library, arXiv.org
Source
arXiv.org
Place of publication
Ithaca
Country of publication
United States
University/institution
Cornell University Library arXiv.org
e-ISSN
2331-8422
Source type
Working Paper
Language of publication
English
Document type
Working Paper
Publication history
 
 
Online publication date
2024-08-20
Milestone dates
2024-08-16 (Submission v1)
Publication history
 
 
   First posting date
20 Aug 2024
ProQuest document ID
3094932255
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/working-papers/modernizing-smt-based-type-error-localization/docview/3094932255/se-2?accountid=208611
Full text outside of ProQuest
Copyright
© 2024. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.
Last updated
2024-08-21
Database
ProQuest One Academic