Unify and conquer
Henry G. Baker · 1990
Type inference is the process by which an expression in an untyped computer language such as the lambda-calculus, Lisp, or a functional language can be assigned a static data type in order to improve the code generated by a compiler. Storage use inference is the process by which a program in a computer language can be statically analyzed to model its run-time behavior, particularly the containment and sharing relations among its run-time data structures. The information generated by storage use information can also be used to improve the code generated by a compiler, because knowledge of the containment and sharing relations of run-time data structures allows for methods of storage allocation and deallocation which are cheaper than garbage-collected heap storage and allows for the in-place updating of functional aggregates.