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From: grier@marx.enet.dec.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Runtime Polymorphism -- To Have and Have Not
Message-ID: <1991Mar5.182130.15091@engage.enet.dec.com>
Date: 5 Mar 91 18:21:30 GMT
References: <567@coatimundi.cs.arizona.edu>
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Reply-To: grier@marx.enet.dec.com ()
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 44

In article <567@coatimundi.cs.arizona.edu>, gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
(David Gudeman) writes:
|> 
|> You can't answer "not necessarily" to a definition.  The above was a
|> definition of "runtime polymorphism" as I planned to use it later.
|> All of your comments that are made to a different definition of
|> "runtime polymorphism" are therefore 
|> 

   Sorry for the confusion, your "definition" wasn't clear about what
you meant.  Over the weekend, I was thinking about it and realized
that I might have misinterpreted you.  I'd never seen a definition
of anything called "runtime polymorphism" before, and you didn't
include any additional information or examples which made what you
meant clear.

   I apologize for going off on a tangent, although an interesting
one...

|> <stuff deleted>
|> 
|> Depends on your definition of weak typing.  If it matches my
|> definition of runtime polymorphism, then that's what I'm talking
|> about.
|> 

   It wasn't.

   Your definition of "runtime polymorphism" doesn't really make sense
in a type-safe system.  In a type-safe language, you wouldn't have
these kinds of issues or problems, so clearly what you're talking about
can only occur in a weakly typed language - thus making optimization
and other smart things extremely difficult, although not impossible.

|> 					David Gudeman
|> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu
|> noao!arizona!gudeman
|> 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'm saying this, not Digital.  Don't hold them responsibile for it!

Michael J. Grier                           Digital Equipment Corporation
(508) 496-8417                             grier@leno.dec.com
Littleton, Mass, USA                       Mailstop OGO1-1/R6