Type inference
automatic detection of the data type of an expression in a programming language
In type theory, type inference (sometimes called type reconstruction) is the automatic detection of the type of an expression. These include programming languages and mathematical type systems, but also natural languages in some branches of computer science and linguistics.
Typeability is sometimes used quasi-synonymously with type inference, however some authors make a distinction between typeability as a decision problem (that has yes/no answer) and type inference as the computation of an actual type for a term.
Nontechnical explanation
In a typed language, a term's type determines the ways it can and cannot be used in that language. For example, consider the English language and terms that could fill in the blank in the phrase "sing _." The term "a song" is of singable type, so it could be placed in the blank to form a meaningful phrase: "sing a song." On the other hand, the term "a friend" does not have the singable type, so "sing a friend" is nonsense. At best it might be metaphor; bending type rules is a feature of poetic language.
A term's type can also affect the interpretation of operations involving that term. For instance, "a song" is of composable type, so we interpret it as the thing created in the phrase "write a song". On the other hand, "a friend" is of recipient type, so we interpret it as the addressee in the phrase "write a friend". In normal language, we would be surprised if "write a song" meant addressing a letter to a song or "write a friend" meant drafting a friend on paper.
“Type inference” enters the record as automatic detection of the data type of an expression in a programming language. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Type, inference and automatic can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Type inference” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.