Compared to other tools adding static types to JavaScript, Infernu’s main strengths are full type inference and strong type safety. Here are a few examples.

Identity Function

function id(x) {
  return x;
}

TypeScript

declare function id(x: any): any;

That’s no good! We can pass any type we want to our function, but the return type is not tied to the argument type - it is treated as anything, basically untyped. So we can do this:

var n = 'hi'; n = id(5);

declare var n: string;

That seems wrong: n is assigned a number via id(5). But wait - there is a way to turn off inference of any types (with --noImplicitAny). If we try that on our identity function, we get:

id.ts(1,13): error TS7006: Parameter 'x' implicitly has an 'any' type.

Explicit Generics

Oops. Ok, but TypeScript has generics! Let’s try that: the TypeScript handbook gives exactly the example we need - we just write the type out explicitly, like so:

function identity<T>(arg: T): T {
    return arg;
}

Flow

Facebook’s Flow has a type system that’s (slightly?) different from TypeScript’s, and apparently works differently. Let’s try it. We can use the flow suggest command to get suggested typing (I’m using version 0.7). Here’s what we get for a single file containing only the identity function above: nothing. It doesn’t suggest any type. Ok, let’s try using our id in a way that makes no sense, to induce an error (after all, type checkers are used to find errors). Here’s bad_id.js:

/* @flow */
function id(x) { return x;}
var n = 'hi'; n = id(5);
var z = n; // added so we can see what flow says the type of n is here.

(Note: The /* @flow */ header is used to tell flow that it should look at this file.) Run flow suggest bad_id.js and you get a diff-style output. I’ve ‘applied’ it to make it easier to read - here’s what flow suggests:

function id(x: number) : number{ return x;}
var n: string | number = 'hi'; n = id(5);
var z: number = n;

Interesting! We managed to get something without reverting to explicit type annotations. But we didn’t get an error!

First, id was inferred to take and return number, apparently because that’s the only way we’ve used it. It would be interesting to see what happens when we use id several times with different types - we’ll try that soon.

Second, n was given a union type string | number, because it takes on both types during its lifetime. It may be a matter of taste, but I would rather not have the type checker deduce implicit union types in this case (n = 'hi'; n = 5;) - instead I would expect that to be an error.

The unique (and impressive) part is that flow is able to tell that z is only ever going to have number values, and so it’s safe to assign it that type. That’s probably a result of the flow analysis they do.

/* @flow */
function id(x) { return x;}
id(5); id('hi');

function id(x: string | number) : string | number{ return x;}

Uh oh - does this means the argument and result types are no longer tied to each other? If I pass in a number, will the compiler check that I use the result only as a number (and not as a string)? Let’s try using it, doing var n = id(5), flow suggests:

var n: string | number = id(5);

Despite n only ever being assigned a number, it now has type string | number. So apparently, union types propagate implicitly, infecting everything on the way.

Explicit Generics

/* @flow */
function foo(x: X): X { return x; }

Infernu

//       id : a.(b -> b)
function id(x) { return x; }

Cool! Without any help from us, Infernu figured out the most generic type. Take a type b, return the same type b. The magic of polymo…Wait, what’s that a. thing?

var obj = { hat: { type: 'top' }, getHatType: function() { return this.hat.type; } };
obj.getHatType(); // ok.
var f = obj.getHatType;
f(); // oops! TypeError: Cannot read property 'type' of undefined

Fortunately, Infernu is here to save you. It infers not only what arguments and return types a function has, but also what this must be for the function call to work, and verifies that you use it correctly.

Infernu type signatures for functions have the following format (subject to change without notice, bla bla bla):

this.(arguments -> result)

//  f : {hat: {type: d, ..f}, ..e}.(() -> d)
var f = obj.getHatType;

Decomposing that type signature, we read that this is expected to be an object containing at least a property called ‘hat’ which is an object with at least a property called ‘type’ of some type d. The function takes no arguments (hence the empty ()) and returns the same type d that was taken from the hat.type property of this. (The ellipsis stuff ..f and ..e is due to row-type polymorphism, which will be elaborated upon in a future blog post.)

Back to our identity function, we examine the signature again: a.(b -> b) - the type of this is given an unconstrained type parameter a - so Infernu is telling us explicitly that this is allowed to be anything for our identity function. Yippy!

Summary

We saw that both TypeScript and Flow (and Google Closure too, which I haven’t shown) support generics that can express the identity function properly. They also offer weak forms of type inference that sometimes yields weakly-typed results. Infernu, on the other hand, will infer generic types automatically, and prefers to fail over giving weak typings.

There are many known discussions about subtyping (inheritance)-based type systems, represented here by TypeScript and Flow, vs. parametric polymorphism (being Infernu in this case). There are known pros and cons to both sides: but one important result is that type inference is just easier when there is no subtyping involved.