typesfreestanding

Typesfreestanding is a term used in discussions of type systems to describe types that exist independently of any particular value or data representation. A freestanding type is defined and manipulated at the type level without requiring a corresponding runtime instance. In practice, such types enable compile-time reasoning, generic programming, and modular design by separating the notion of what a type represents from how values of that type are constructed or stored.

Key characteristics include independence from value-level data, stability across representations, and suitability for type-level computation or constraint-based programming. They often appear in languages that support advanced type systems or type-level features, such as type families or dependent types, where types encode properties or invariants that do not depend on concrete values.

Examples include type-level naturals, length-indexed vectors, and phantom types that carry metadata at the type level without runtime overhead.

Applications include enforcing invariants, API design, generic libraries, and formal verification.

History and usage: The phrase "typesfreestanding" is not a widely standardized term; it appears primarily in academic or niche discussions about type systems and can be described by practitioners as a category of types that are compile-time-only or independent from data.

See also: Type theory, Type-level programming, Dependent types, Phantom types, Type classes.