not safe at all

[Nick Mathewson]

On Fri, 13 Jul 2001 19:50:04 GMT, Terry Reedy <tjreedy at home.com> wrote:
  [Nick wrote:]
>> I believe it, but it doesn't demonstrate a thing about type safety.
>> You've just discovered dynamic typing.
>
>This might be better called dynamic naming or dynamic binding.  'Dynaming
>typing' is confusing, as evidenced here, because of its two possible
>interpretations.
>
>1. Types are assigned at runtime (because they are created at runtime).
>True.
>2. Types are changeable at runtime.  Untrue, unless you count changing an
>instance's base class (a recent addition to the language.   In this sense,
>Python object types are fixed or static.  They are not like C unions.

Indeed.  I'll try to remember to use "dynamic binding" in the future:
while 'dynamic typing' was what I used in school, it does indeed
suffer from the ambiguity you note.

Relieved-to-know-at-least-one-interpretation-of-my-post-was-accurate'ly yrs,

-- 
 Nick Mathewson    <9 nick 9 m at alum dot mit dot edu> 
                     Remove 9's to respond.  No spam.