Word.ws English Dictionary

value restriction

value restriction noun: in a functional language, inference of a polymorphic type only for syntactic values (values that can be evaluated at compile time) to ensure that a program is type-safe.

Noun

value restriction (uncountable)

  1. (type theory) In a functional language, inference of a polymorphic type only for syntactic values (values that can be evaluated at compile time) to ensure that a program is type-safe.
    • A typical example is an expression returning always the empty list. It should be given the polymorphic type α list, but this is not possible under the value restriction if the expression has to be evaluated.2004, Jacques Garrigue, Relaxing the Value Restriction
    • It has been found empirically that eta expansion usually suffices for dealing with the value restriction.2007, Geoffrey Smith, Notes on SML97's Value Restriction

Questions about value restriction

What does value restriction mean?
Value restriction means in a functional language, inference of a polymorphic type only for syntactic values (values that can be evaluated at compile time) to ensure that a program is type-safe.
What part of speech is value restriction?
Value restriction is a noun.

Words near value restriction in the dictionary

  1. value propositions
  2. value raise
  3. value raised
  4. value raises
  5. value raising
  6. value restriction
  7. value statement
  8. value statements
  9. value system
  10. value systems
  11. value theories

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: value restriction (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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