Quoth David Hopwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Pascal Costanza wrote: > > Chris Smith wrote: > > > > Types can be represented at runtime via type tags. You could insist on > > using the term "dynamically tagged languages", but this wouldn't change > > a lot. Exactly _because_ it doesn't make sense in a statically typed > > setting, the term "dynamically typed language" is good enough to > > communicate what we are talking about - i.e. not (static) typing. > > Oh, but it *does* make sense to talk about dynamic tagging in a statically > typed language.
Though I'm *seriously* reluctant to encourage this thread... A prime example of this is Perl, which has both static and dynamic typing. Variables are statically typed scalar/array/hash, and then scalars are dynamically typed string/int/unsigned/float/ref. > That's part of what makes the term "dynamically typed" harmful: it implies > a dichotomy between "dynamically typed" and "statically typed" languages, > when in fact dynamic tagging and static typing are (mostly) independent > features. Nevertheless, I see no problem in calling both of these 'typing'. They are both means to the same end: causing a bunch of bits to be interpreted in a meaningful fashion. The only difference is whether the distinction is made a compile- or run-time. The above para had no ambiguities... Ben -- Every twenty-four hours about 34k children die from the effects of poverty. Meanwhile, the latest estimate is that 2800 people died on 9/11, so it's like that image, that ghastly, grey-billowing, double-barrelled fall, repeated twelve times every day. Full of children. [Iain Banks] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
