Dialyzer does not catch errors on returned functions

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1

Background

While playing around with dialyzer, typespecs and currying, I was able to create an example of a false positive in dialyzer.

For the purposes of this MWE, I am using diallyxir (versions included) because it makes my life easier. The author of dialyxir confirmed this was not a problem on their side, so that possibility is excluded for now.

Environment

$ elixir -v
Erlang/OTP 24 [erts-12.2.1] [source] [64-bit] [smp:12:12] [ds:12:12:10] [async-threads:1] [jit]
Elixir 1.13.2 (compiled with Erlang/OTP 24)
  • Which version of Dialyxir are you using? (cat mix.lock | grep dialyxir):
"dialyxir": {:hex, :dialyxir, "1.1.0", "c5aab0d6e71e5522e77beff7ba9e08f8e02bad90dfbeffae60eaf0cb47e29488", [:mix], [{:erlex, ">= 0.2.6", [hex: :erlex, repo: "hexpm", optional: false]}], "hexpm", "07ea8e49c45f15264ebe6d5b93799d4dd56a44036cf42d0ad9c960bc266c0b9a"},
"erlex": {:hex, :erlex, "0.2.6", "c7987d15e899c7a2f34f5420d2a2ea0d659682c06ac607572df55a43753aa12e", [:mix], [], "hexpm", "2ed2e25711feb44d52b17d2780eabf998452f6efda104877a3881c2f8c0c0c75"},

Current behavior

Given the following code sample:

defmodule PracticingCurrying do

  @spec greater_than(integer()) :: (integer() -> String.t())
  def greater_than(min) do
    fn number -> number > min end
  end

end

Which clearly has a wrong typing, I get a success message:

$ mix dialyzer
Compiling 1 file (.ex)
Generated grokking_fp app
Finding suitable PLTs
Checking PLT...
[:compiler, :currying, :elixir, :gradient, :gradualizer, :kernel, :logger, :stdlib, :syntax_tools]
Looking up modules in dialyxir_erlang-24.2.1_elixir-1.13.2_deps-dev.plt
Finding applications for dialyxir_erlang-24.2.1_elixir-1.13.2_deps-dev.plt
Finding modules for dialyxir_erlang-24.2.1_elixir-1.13.2_deps-dev.plt
Checking 518 modules in dialyxir_erlang-24.2.1_elixir-1.13.2_deps-dev.plt
Adding 44 modules to dialyxir_erlang-24.2.1_elixir-1.13.2_deps-dev.plt
done in 0m24.18s
No :ignore_warnings opt specified in mix.exs and default does not exist.

Starting Dialyzer
[
  check_plt: false,
  init_plt: '/home/user/Workplace/fl4m3/grokking_fp/_build/dev/dialyxir_erlang-24.2.1_elixir-1.13.2_deps-dev.plt',
  files: ['/home/user/Workplace/fl4m3/grokking_fp/_build/dev/lib/grokking_fp/ebin/Elixir.ImmutableValues.beam',
   '/home/user/Workplace/fl4m3/grokking_fp/_build/dev/lib/grokking_fp/ebin/Elixir.PracticingCurrying.beam',
   '/home/user/Workplace/fl4m3/grokking_fp/_build/dev/lib/grokking_fp/ebin/Elixir.TipCalculator.beam'],
  warnings: [:unknown]
]
Total errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Unnecessary Skips: 0
done in 0m1.02s
done (passed successfully)

Expected behavior

I expected dialyzer to tell me the correct spec is @spec greater_than(integer()) :: (integer() -> bool()).

As a side note (and comparison, if you will) gradient does pick up the error.
I know that comparing these tools is like comparing oranges and apples, but I think it is still worth mentioning.

Questions

  1. Is dialyzer not intended to catch this type of error?
  2. If it should catch the error, what can possibly be failing? (is it my example that is incorrect, or something inside dialyzer?)

I personally find it hard to believe this could be a bug in Dialyzer, the tool has been used rather extensively by a lot of people for me to be the first to discover this error. However, I cannot explain what is happening.

Help is appreciated.

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