Re: Proposal: 6NF

From: David Cressey <dcressey_at_verizon.net>
Date: Fri, 13 Oct 2006 04:06:50 GMT
Message-ID: <uhEXg.5487$WD1.5239@trndny04>

"Marshall" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote in message news:1160694922.247399.59440_at_m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
> On Oct 12, 1:26 pm, Gene Wirchenko <g..._at_ocis.net> wrote:
> > "David Cressey" <dcres..._at_verizon.net> wrote:
> > >"Gene Wirchenko" <g..._at_ocis.net> wrote in message
> >
> > >> C is quite strongly typed. It also allows you to override
> > >> typing, but the results are often undefined or
implementation-defined.
> >
> > >That's weak typing IIUC. I do not think you do.
> >

>

> We're back to definitional arguments. The question of whether
> C is strongly typed or not is dependent on the definition of
> "strongly typed." And in the programming language theory
> world, there is no generally accepted definition of "strongly typed."
> In fact, the term is largely out of favor because it lacks a clear
> meaning. There are some people who take it to mean that the
> language does not contain any mechanisms to subvert the
> type system, and by that definition C is weakly typed.
> Others take it as a synonym for "statically typed" which
> means that every term has a static type. By this definition
> C is strongly typed. Or it might mean some other thing.
>

Thanks Marshall.

The definition I always worked on was what you said above in "lacking any mechanisms to subvert the type system" with one exception. You can have some kind of explicit type casting function without losing strong typing.

e.g. chr(65) in Pascal is of type char.

And, according to this definition of "strong typing" C is weakly typed.

I was unaware of the other definitions.

As far as I'm aware, the static/dynamic distinction is a different one.

> Unless all parties to the conversation agree on the
> specific meaning, the conversation is likely to be ...
> difficult.

True, true. Received on Thu Oct 12 2006 - 23:06:50 CDT