From: Phillip J. Eby [mailto:pje@telecommunity.com]

At 09:56 AM 10/28/03 +0100, Alex Martelli wrote:

...

AND, adaptation is not typecasting: e.g y=adapt("23", int) should NOT succeed.

And, why do you consider adaptation *not* to be typecasting? I always think of it as "give me X, rendered as a Y", which certainly sounds like a description of typecasting to me.

Because (IMO anyway) adaption is *not* "give me X, rendered as Y". Adaption is "here is an X, can it be used as a Y?". They are two distinct concepts, although obviously there are crossover points. A string cannot be used as an int, although an int can be created from the string representation of an int. Adaption should not involve any change to the underlying data - mutating operations on the adapted object should (attempt to) mutate the original object (assuming the adapted object and original object are not one and the same). Tim Delaney