In type theory, a type rule is an inference rule that describes how a type system assigns a type to a syntactic construction. These rules may be applied by the type system to determine if a program is well typed and what type expressions have. A prototypical example of the use of type rules is in defining type inference in the simply typed lambda calculus, which is the internal language of Cartesian closed categories.
Notation
An expression
The sequents above the line are the premises that must be fulfilled for the rule to be applied, yielding the conclusion: the sequents below the line. This can be read as: if expression
For example, a simple language to perform arithmetic calculations on real numbers may have the following rules
A type rule may have no premises, and usually the line is omitted in these cases. A type rule may also change an environment by adding new variables to a previous environment; for example, a declaration may have the following type rule, where a new variable
Here the syntax of the let expression is that of Standard ML. Thus type rules can be used to derive the types of composed expressions, much like in natural deduction.