Jean-Philippe Bernardy, Patrik Jansson, Koen Claessen. Testing Polymorphic Properties. In Andrew D. Gordon, editor, Programming Languages and Systems, 19th European Symposium on Programming, ESOP 2010, Held as Part of the Joint European Conferences on Theory and Practice of Software, ETAPS 2010, Paphos, Cyprus, March 20-28, 2010. Proceedings. Volume 6012 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 125-144, Springer, 2010. [doi]
This paper is concerned with testing properties of polymorphic functions. The problem is that testing can only be performed on specific monomorphic instances, whereas parametrically polymorphic functions are expected to work for any type. We present a schema for constructing a monomorphic instance for a polymorphic property, such that correctness of that single instance implies correctness for all other instances. We also give a formal definition of the class of polymorphic properties the schema can be used for. Compared to the standard method of testing such properties, our schema leads to a significant reduction of necessary test cases.