Re: Nested Relations / RVAs / NFNF

"Marshall Spight" <mspight_at_dnai.com> wrote in message news:<ipYfd.324263$3l3.156622_at_attbi_s03>...
> "Laconic2" <laconic2_at_comcast.net> wrote in message news:PuWdnYoANcjSbOLcRVn-qA_at_comcast.com...

<snip>

> OTOH, it does make sense to have them both be, say, int32 under
> the covers. The important thing to remember about static analysis
> is that it's static; type checks may not happen at runtime; in fact,
> type information may not even be *present* at runtime.
>

In any reasonably advanced system, type information will always be present at runtime; whether as tags attached to individual values or as metadata in a catalogue, it'll always be around.

I think this sort of discussion comes up because our languages seem to be pretty awful at allowing us to introduce new alphabets. For example, how would you represent "two kilograms" in a program ? 2 doesn't cut it, because that's an integer. 2.0 is a real number (or a float, or a double, or...) You can't typically readily say 2kg, so you're left with awful stropping, like kg(2) or somesuch.

Cheers,

• Tony