> > The advantage of static typing in this context is that the variable still > holds the type even if the value happens to be null. Any value that has been > exposed to user input comes back as a string and has to be validated and > converted to the correct data type. Static typing provides a convenient > place to generically find out what that type is, to drive a > validator/convertor. There are many ways to do the equivalent in Python, and > I'm interested in any suggestions that save me some work.
While this information in statically typed languages _can_ be used (but not always is, in a web context), it also is available in the database schema, which ultimately decides what it groks and what not. But this is - especially in web-development - only half the truth. Because even such a simple thing as reading a float value from the user gets complicated in the presence of different locales. It buys you nothing then to have static type declarations available. A decent framework for webdevelopment, as e.g. TurboGears, allows you to declare form field validation and coercion rules, thus on a higher application level (your code), you only deal with the correctly typed values. Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
