Re: Values have types ??

From: Leandro Guimarães Faria Corsetti Dutra <lgcdutra_at_terra.com.br>
Date: Sat, 06 Sep 2003 11:16:20 +0200
Message-ID: <pan.2003.09.06.09.16.20.358578@terra.com.br>

On Fri, 05 Sep 2003 17:59:55 -0700, Costin Cozianu wrote:

>> Could be integer, real, string...
>>

> Why not "even integer", or "even positive integer", or prime number ?

Indeed, why not? Surely yes. That's what the three little dots at the end of my phrase mean, they are called an 'ellipsis' and are meant to a open set of unspecified alternatives.

>> 	The discussion was about values implicitly *in a RDB*.  There,
>> a value will *always* have a type.  So your trap catches no mice... for
>> this kind of mouse always live in a RDB.

>
> In the D&D proposal a value is guaranteed to have a most specific type
> (MST), which is largely undefined in the book that a few people around
> here have come to recite like the bible.

If you were less biased against D&D you'd see these few people tend to have good points, and that in the Bible analogy they sometimes question the prophets of the faith...

Anyway that's irrelevant, because you gave a representation without a type, so we can't even agree about its precise meaning without assuming a type... you end up inadvertently proving what you seem to want to refute.

> In the above case I'd propose that the MST is, well, {2}.

That meaning? You see, the type is part of the meaning...

> 2 then has the "type" {2}

So what?

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Received on Sat Sep 06 2003 - 04:16:20 CDT