Occurrence typing modulo theories

Abstract

We present a new type system combining occurrence typing---a technique previously used to type check programs in dynamically-typed languages such as Racket, Clojure, and JavaScript---with dependent refinement types. We demonstrate that the addition of refinement types allows the integration of arbitrary solver-backed reasoning about logical propositions from external theories. By building on occurrence typing, we can add our enriched type system as a natural extension of Typed Racket, reusing its core while increasing its expressiveness. The result is a well-tested type system with a conservative, decidable core in which types may depend on a small but extensible set of program terms. In addition to describing our design, we present the following: a formal model and proof of correctness; a strategy for integrating new theories, with specific examples including linear arithmetic and bitvectors; and an evaluation in the context of the full Typed Racket implementation. Specifically, we take safe vector operations as a case study, examining all vector accesses in a 56,000 line corpus of Typed Racket programs. Our system is able to prove that 50% of these are safe with no new annotations, and with a few annotations and modifications we capture more than 70%.