From: dblack@...
Date: 2003-09-14T04:48:19+09:00
Subject: Re: Duck Typing

Hi --

On Sun, 14 Sep 2003, Ryan Pavlik wrote:

>   7) In any of the given languages, and Ruby, one can choose to check
>      types or not check types.

Or at least (in Ruby) you can check classes.  But the point is that,
with all the calls to is_a? in the world, and whatever their result,
in the final anaysis an object either knows how to do what you ask it
to, or it doesn't.  You can't change that underlying condition of
programming in Ruby, and that's the condition people are referring to
when they describe "duck typing" as a condition of the language.

(Nor does that condition, that dynamism, go away if you decide to use
the term "duck typing" in a different sense.)


David

-- 
David Alan Black
home: dblack@superlink.net
work: blackdav@shu.edu
Web:  http://pirate.shu.edu/~blackdav