Separate Polyvariant Binding Time Reconstruction

Binding time analysis aims at determining which identifiers can be bound to their values at compile time. This binding time information is of utmost importance when performing partial evaluation or constant folding on programs. Existing binding time analyses are global in that they require complete program texts and descriptions of which of their inputs are available at compile time. As a consequence, such analyses cannot be used in programming languages that support modules or separate compilation. Libraries have to be analyzed every time they are used in some program. This is particularly limiting when considering programming in-the-large; any modification of an application results in the reprocessing of all the modules. This paper presents a new static analysis for higher-order typed functional languages that relies on a type and e#ect system to obtain polyvariant and separate binding time information. By allowing function types to be parametrized over the binding times of their arg..