Static Typing in Python

JCM joshway_without_spam at myway.com
Tue Mar 16 13:59:07 EST 2004


Jacek Generowicz <jacek at lxplus057.cern.ch> wrote:
...
> As I keep saying, weak typing is a wishy-washy concept, and your
> working definition has a lot of merit. Could you cite anything that
> uses your definition? (I'm not asking for these to argue with you, but
> to have something to cite in situations when I might want to back up
> your working definition.)

I'm having trouble finding references here.  Right now the best I can
do is

  http://www.haskell.org/aboutHaskell.html

specifically

  3. No core dumps

  Most functional languages, and Haskell in particular, are strongly
  typed, eliminating a huge class of easy-to-make errors at compile
  time. In particular, strong typing means no core dumps! There is
  simply no possibility of treating an integer as a pointer, or
  following a null pointer.

which implies "weak typing" means there's the possibility of treating
a piece of data as the wrong type.

The FOLDOC definition

  http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=weak+typing

which mentions things like

  int a = 5;
  float b = a;

to me doesn't have anything to do with weak typing, since the int is
correctly converted to a float.  I guess thay're calling it "weak
typing" because the cast is implicit.

So there are more definitions out there (and more confusion) than we
need.



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