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From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au (Richard A. O'Keefe)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Dynamic typing (part 3)
Message-ID: <5071@goanna.cs.rmit.oz.au>
Date: 26 Mar 91 10:37:59 GMT
References: <731@optima.cs.arizona.edu> <1991Mar20.185308.8275@maths.nott.ac.uk> <25MAR91.21515980@uc780.umd.edu>
Organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia
Lines: 23

I mentioned that System V C has hsearch.
In article <25MAR91.21515980@uc780.umd.edu>, cs450a03@uc780.umd.edu writes:
> Instead I saw something that scared me worse: A global hash table
> (now, THAT's useful)!  I want to use hashing to speed up this little
> old function here, and all I have to do is make sure it's a unique
> instance of the solution...

> Maybe my nonlocality gripes are petty, but geez...

I guess I should have put a few smileys in my posting.  I think the
hsearch() interface in the System V library is very bad.  I would
try hard to fail any of my students who did that.  Actually, I am of
the opinion that typing *values* (dynamic typing) is a Good Idea --
not least because mistakes I make in C just can't be made in Scheme
or won't go un-noticed if they _can_ be made.  I also like languages
where it's impossible for an uninitialised variable to go un-noticed
(Dijkstra's notation -- I often design in that then code in C,
Scheme, Pop-2, Pop-11, Arthur Sale's Pascal compiler for B6700s, ...).

	(declare (optimize safety))

-- 
Seen from an MVS perspective, UNIX and MS-DOS are hard to tell apart.