I'm trying to learn more about whole-program type checking and type inferencing systems that use information from function call sites to compute type information (in addition to the standard approach of using the function body). For example, such an algorithm might use a function call like foo(1) to infer that the function in foo takes integer arguments. Obviously this would complicate inference a lot and make the check non-modular.Anyway, I haven't had much luck finding any research on this approach, probably because I don't know the correct terminology to describe what I'm talking about. Any pointers?
Research on call-site based type inference?
pl.programming languages;type theory;type inference;type systems
Almost all systems with type inference use call-site information to do this.  Examples include Standard ML, OCaml, F#, and Haskell.  Many other languages use call-site information to infer type parameter instantiation, such as Java, C#, Scala, and Typed Racket.  This often goes by the name Local Type Inference.I would just describe what you're looking for as Type Inference, and you should probably start by looking up what's commonly known as the Hindley-Milner system.  The Wikipedia page gives a reasonable introduction, and pointers to the original papers.  The place to start for Local Type Inference is Pierce and Turner's original paper, best read in the TOPLAS 2000 version (ACM, PDF).