Preemptive Type Checking

Dynamically typed languages are very well suited for rapid prototyping, agile programming methodologies and rapidly evolving software. However, programmers can still benefit from the ability to detect type errors in their code early, in particular if this does not impose restrictions on their programming style. In this paper we describe a new type checking system that identifies potential type errors in such languages through a flow-sensitive static analysis. It computes for every expression the variable's present (from the values that it has last been assigned) and future (with which it is used in the further program execution) types, respectively. Using this information, the mechanism inserts type checks at strategic points in the original program. We prove that these checks are inserted as early as possible and preempt type errors earlier than existing type systems. We further show that these checks do not change the semantics of programs that do not raise type errors. Preemptive type checking can be added to existing languages without the need to modify the existing runtime environment. Instead, it can be invoked at a very late stage, after the compilation to bytecode and initialisation of the program. We demonstrate an implementation of this for the Python language, and its effectiveness on a number of standard benchmarks. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.