Type Checker

In this assignment, you will work with a typed language that includes numbers, booleans, conditionals, functions, and numeric lists (ie lists of numbers). The concrete syntax for the language is given by the following BNF grammars:

   <expr> ::= <num>
            | true
            | false
            | {+ <expr> <expr>}
            | {- <expr> <expr>}
            | {* <expr> <expr>}
            | {iszero <expr>}
            | {bif <expr> <expr> <expr>}

            | <id>
            | {with {<id> <expr>} <expr>}
            | {fun {<id> : <type>} : <type> <expr>}
            | {<expr> <expr>}

            | nempty
            | {ncons <expr> <expr>}
            | {nempty? <expr>}
            | {nfirst <expr>}
            | {nrest <expr>}

   <type> ::= number
            | boolean
            | nlist
            | (<type> -> <type>)
  
In the surface syntax for types, base types are represented by symbols, and the arrow type by a Scheme list of three elements: the type of the argument, the symbol ->, and the type of the result.

You have not implemented some of these constructs yet, but they should be familiar:

You have three tasks:
  1. Define the function parse, which consumes the concrete representation of a program, and returns its abstract syntax tree. You may assume that the concrete representation conforms to the above grammer.

  2. Write down type judgments for the five numeric list constructs: nempty, ncons, nempty?, nfirst, and nrest. You should typeset them in ASCII comments at part of your Scheme code, eg:

          ; E |- lhs : number       E |- rhs : number
          ; -----------------------------------------
          ;      E |- (+ lhs rhs) : number
        

  3. Implement the function type-of, which consumes the abstract representation of a program (i.e. the result of parse). If the program has no type errors, type-of returns the type of the program, using the names of the types given in the grammar above. If the program does have a type error, type-of raises an exception (raise msg), where msg is an appropriate error string. For example:

        > (type-of (parse '{3 4}))
        uncaught exception: "Number is not a function"
       

As always, include appropriate comments, contracts, test cases, etc.