In standard Java, wildcards behave like existential types: they must be opened before use in a method invocation, a process the compiler performs implicitly via capture conversion. We present Java-TX, a dialect of Java that sidesteps this existential encoding and treats wildcards as placeholders for unknown types, used directly without prior opening. This choice simplifies the type system and makes it compatible with an existing global type inference algorithm. The trade-off is that some method calls valid in standard Java become unavailable in Java-TX. In effect, we trade some of Java’s wildcard expressiveness for global type inference. We explore the metatheory of Java-TX through Featherweight Java-TX (FJ-TX), a functional core calculus for Java-TX that extends Featherweight Generic Java with our wildcard interpretation. We prove type soundness for FJ-TX. Finally, we evaluate the practical impact of omitting capture conversion by conducting a study on open-source Java projects by calculating an underapproximation of how much existing Java code is compatible with the Java-TX type system.

Java's type system mostly relies on type checking augmented with local type inference to improve programmer convenience. We study global type inference for Featherweight Generic Java (FGJ), a functional Java core language. Given generic class headers and field specifications, our inference algorithm infers all method types if classes do not make use of polymorphic recursion. The algorithm is constraint-based and improves on prior work in several respects. Despite the restricted setting, global type inference for FGJ is NP-complete.