This paper shows that a type graph (obtained via polymorphic type inference) harbors explicit directional flow paths between functions. These flow paths arise from the instantiations of polymorphic types and correspond to call-return sequences in first-order programs. We show that flow information can be computed efficiently while considering only paths with well matched call-return sequences, even in the higher-order case. Furthermore, we present a practical algorithm for inferring type instantiation graphs and provide empirical evidence to the scalability of the presented techniques by applying them in the context of points-to analysis for C programs.

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In  Proceedings of the 2000 ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation

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