Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think.com!mintaka!bloom-beacon!eru!hagbard!sunic!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!aiai!jeff From: jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk (Jeff Dalton) Newsgroups: comp.lang.functional Subject: Re: A question about types in ML Message-ID: <3800@skye.ed.ac.uk> Date: 21 Nov 90 17:18:56 GMT References: <4906@rex.cs.tulane.edu> <11937@life.ai.mit.edu> Reply-To: jeff@aiai.UUCP (Jeff Dalton) Distribution: comp Organization: AIAI, University of Edinburgh, Scotland Lines: 21 In article <11937@life.ai.mit.edu> tmb@ai.mit.edu writes: >In article , peterson-john@cs.yale.edu (John C. Peterson) writes: >|> Regarding typing in Common Lisp & ML, it is incorrect to say that >|> Common Lisp lacks types; type declarations in CL are actually far more >|> general than those in ML. What Common Lisp lacks is any sort of well >|> defined type inference, a major deficiency. > >I didn't say that "CL lacks types", but that it does not have support >for "handling typing". But it does have support for "handling typing". It may not be enough support (in your view), it may not be the support you want, but your claim that there is no support whatsoever is just false. >The fact that you can declare very general types >that the compiler cannot possibly check at compile time is one >indication of the problem. Sorry if I was imprecise. If this is one indication of the problem, what is the problem? I don't doubt that the CL treatment of types has all sorts of problems, from various points of view.