From: matz@... (Yukihiro Matsumoto)
Date: 2000-02-16T00:31:46+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:01388] Re: Say hi (bis)

Hi,

In message "[ruby-talk:01377] Re: Say hi (bis)"
    on 00/02/15, Pixel <pixel_@mandrakesoft.com> writes:

|that wasn't my point, stuff i want mainly is _compile-time_ checks.
|
|eg:
|
|def fact(n); n==0 ? 1 : n * fact(n - 1); end
|
|can be *infered* as Fixnum -> Fixnum
|
|i know this analysis restrict the power of dynamic-typing, but i'm really sure a
|lot of typos can be catched by using this rubylint stuff. You must see it as
|saying ``Hey, strange stuff here''. Then just have a quick look at those strange
|points...

Hmm, I'm not sure this kind of type inference for totally dynamic
language like Ruby would work.  In Ruby, even Fixnum#+ can be
redefined, so that no type information can be used at compile time.
It's much harder than Perl, which is partially static typed language. 

Yes, Perl is a statically typed language, except for references.  The
only types in Perl are scalar, array, hash, and type glob. :-)

							matz.