A Semantic Basis for Quest

Quest is a programming language based on impredicative type quantifiers and subtyping within a three-level structure of kinds, types and type operators, and values. The semantics of Quest is rather challenging. In particular, difficulties arise when we try to model simultaneously features such as contravariant function spaces, record types, subtyping, recursive types, and fixpoints. In this paper we describe in detail the type inference rules for Quest, and we give them meaning using a partial equivalence relation model of types. Subtyping is interpreted as in previous work by Bruce and Longo, but the interpretation of some aspects, namely subsumption, power kinds, and record subtyping, is novel. The latter is based on a new encoding of record types. We concentrate on modeling quantifiers and subtyping; recursion is the subject of current work. Appears in: Journal of Functional Programming, Vol 1, Part 4, pp.417-458, Cambridge Univ. Press, Oct 1991. SRC Research Report 55, February 14, 1990. Revised January 1, 1993.  Digital Equipment Corporation 1990,1993. This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of the Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation in Palo Alto, California; an acknowledgment of the authors and individuals contributors to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproducing, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to the Systems Research Center. All rights reserved. 1 This author's work has been supported in part by Digital Equipment Corporation.

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