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From: ndiamond@watdaisy.UUCP (Norman Diamond)
Newsgroups: net.lang
Subject: Re: "safety" of a language
Message-ID: <6886@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Jan-85 12:06:18 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6886
Posted: Mon Jan 28 12:06:18 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Jan-85 05:43:05 EST
References: <2340@hplabsc.UUCP> <4948@utzoo.UUCP> <6292@boring.UUCP> <1050@opus.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 25

> In Pascal, it's perfectly reasonable to change the type of a variable or
> the parameters of a procedure, fix what you can find, and let the compiler
> find the rest.  In C, there's a big chance that there will be errors that
> the compiler won't catch.

Unfortunately, this is a poor example.  With very rare exceptions, user-defined
type names should be declared in both languages, and used consistently in each
set of procedures.  Of course, when two kinds of variables do not really
represent the same kind of object, but only happen to be expressible using
isomorphic types, they should still have two distinct type-names.

Now, when you want to change the type of a variable and related parameters,
etc., you change the type definition in one place, and the program remains
consistent.  In either language.

Of course, C didn't used to support this possibility until enough Pascal users
discovered how powerful a tool it was.

-- Norman Diamond

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