From: Sean O'Dell <sean@...>
Date: 2004-06-06T14:04:25+09:00
Subject: Re: How to ducktype a Hash?

On Saturday 05 June 2004 19:38, Florian Gross wrote:
> Sean O'Dell wrote:
> > No, it IS my problem.  My code quietly does some really undesired things
> > when non-hash-like objects get to this one point in code.  I hate this
> > attitude about typing.  I know you mean well, and it's been talked out to
> > death, but I don't buy the whole thing about "if it has the methods, it
> > must be fine." It's clearly NOT fine.  If an array or a string, both
> > which have the [] methods I need, get to this one place, I drop a whole
> > branch of data being passed around.  The ideal is to catch it as an
> > error, and remedy the situation by finding out how the data came in that
> > way in the first place and prevent it, or perhaps just detect it and
> > perform some special case.  As it is, I can't tell for sure when an
> > object really DOES act like a hash.
>
> I think what you're getting at is this:
>
> Duck typing isn't really "quacks like a duck", but rather "quacks" in
> its current state.
>
> Maybe it would be an interesting thing to be able to take a set of unit
> tests and dynamically run them on the Object that you're getting...?

It would be simpler to just have some typing.

	Sean O'Dell