From: David Garamond <lists@...6.isreserved.com>
Date: 2004-06-07T02:51:55+09:00
Subject: Re: How to ducktype a Hash?

Dave Thomas wrote:
> On Jun 6, 2004, at 11:42, Sean O'Dell wrote:
> 
>> If Hash tagged itself as complying with the "hash type" you could 
>> depend on
>> certain methods doing certain things and taking a certain number of
>> parameters.
> 
> Perhaps you'd like Objective-C, which has the concept of protocols, and 
> where variable types can be unconstrained, partially constrained, or 
> specified by type.

Interesting. Will Ruby ever have something like this? Will it be a good 
idea? For example, let there be a $TYPESAFE (ala $SAFE) that modifies 
how Ruby does type checking. $TYPESAFE=0 is the default, and makes Ruby 
behaves just like it is now (i.e. no type checking). $TYPESAFE = 1 will 
make variables have type and a warning will be issued if a variable is 
reassigned to a value of different type. $TYPESAFE = 2 will enable 
method parameter type checking. $TYPESAFE = 3 will forbid a variable 
from being reassigned another type, and so on.

-- 
dave