Python Strings

[Erik Max Francis]

Keith Ray wrote:

> What most people mean by "strongly-typed" or "staticly typed" is
> "there
> is compile-time checking of variable types" (and parameter-types, and
> function-return-types and expressions being assigned or passed into
> variables/parameters/etc.).
> 
> What most people mean by "weakly-typed" or "dynamically typed" is
> "there
> is only run-time checking of variable types" (and parameter-types, and
> function-return-types and expressions being assigned or passed into
> variables/parameters/etc.).

I think it would be a mistake to consider these pairs of words synonyms;
strongly typed vs. weakly typed and statically typed vs. dynamically
typed are two different (orthogonal) measures.  Python is strongly
typed, but dynamically typed.  Java or C++ is strongly typed and
statically typed.  Perl, for instance, would be weakly typed and
dynamically typed.

Strong vs. weak typing has to do with how data types are managed; if the
same data is treated as different types in different contexts, then it's
weakly typed.  Perl is an example, for instance, because $a = 1 can be
treated either as an integer or a string, depending on the context. 
With weak typing the "types" of objects are contained in the operations
(in Perl, + is arithmetic addition, and . is string concatenation) that
are being performed on these weakly-typed objects, rather than in strong
typing where the type is an intrinsic property of an object (in Python,
1 is an int, but '1' is a string).

Your descriptions above are most accurately for static vs. dynamic
typing.  Static typing means compile-time checking and variables of
fixed, pre-declared type; dynamic typing (or late binding) means
variables are simply untyped references to objects and that operations
and called methods determine at runtime what the type of their arguments
are.

-- 
 Erik Max Francis / max at alcyone.com / http://www.alcyone.com/max/
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