on Wed, 02 Jan 2002 12:43:56AM -0800, Erik Steffl insinuated: > Richard Cobbe wrote: > > > > Perl does have strong types, but they don't really correspond to the > > types that most people are used to thinking of. Perl's types are > > > > * scalars (no real distinction between strings, numbers, and the > > undefined value) > > * lists > > * hashes > > * filehandles > > > > (I haven't really used Perl since Perl 4, so this list may not be > > complete.) > > actually there is real distinction between string and number, it's > just that it's internal only (perl stores numbers and strings > differently, it also treats them differently). > [...] > > the point was that it's not a strong type system - by which I mean > that you can assign pretty much any value to any l-value, no questions > asked. You don't get segfault but you still get non-working program > (e.g. when you mistakenly assing array to scalar, you get size of array > in scalar).
agreed -- and not only that, but you have to be careful to be aware of which type you're using in order to compare scalars and have it mean anything -- numerical operators being the standard ==, !=, &c.; whereas the equivalent string operators are 'eq', 'ne', &c. it still doesn't segfault (which is beautiful, and was the point here, i know), but it makes your program more non-functional than if it just treated the values the same. </nori> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>-------------------------------------------------- -------------------------http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/~nori/jnl/daily.html
