From: Dan Sugalski <dan@...>
Date: 2003-02-15T08:08:55+09:00
Subject: Re: von Rossum on Strong vs. Weak Typing

At 7:08 AM +0900 2/15/03, Chris Thomas wrote:
>On Friday, February 14, 2003, at 12:21  PM, Dan Sugalski wrote:
>
>>I dunno, C lives outside the set of languages that really care 
>>about strong or weak typing. If you really need to find its place 
>>in the dichotomy, it's a strongly typed language that lets you lie 
>>to it. (That it only really has three types is a separate issue, 
>>of > course...)
>
>Increasingly off-topic, but I'm curious about which three types you 
>consider C to have. Integer, pointer, float? Surely not string or 
>array, which are both pointers with as little syntax sugar as 
>Ritchie could get away with. But you might consider a pointer a 
>glorified integer.

Integer, pointer, and float are it. I don't consider integer buffers 
with in-band markers as "strings". Ick. I'm used to dealing with 
split I/D space machines, so there's a natural split between integers 
and pointers.

Given that I've decoded IEEE floats using int-cast pointer tricks, I 
could see arguing that C has only one real type, but that might be 
going a little too far... :)
-- 
                                         Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                       teddy bears get drunk