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From: grano@cs.Helsinki.FI (Kari Gran|)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C strongly typed?
Message-ID: <4417@hydra.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 11 Mar 90 02:54:16 GMT
References: <259@eiffel.UUCP> <1990Mar1.172526.28683@utzoo.uucp> <849@enea.se> <2963@goanna.oz.au> <4401@hydra.Helsinki.FI> <8356@pt.cs.cmu.edu>
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Organization: University of Helsinki, Department of Computer Science
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	A related question is whether 'strong typing' refers to static
or dynamic type checking - some type errors just can't be detected at
compile time (subranges and indexes, for example).

	Also, one could argue whether a language that has implicit
type conversions is strongly typed. In Pascal, you may write

	i : integer; r : real;
	...
	r:= i + r;

and the compiler won't object (I hope :-). Ada disallows this, but moves
the whole stuff into _sub_types, thus allowing somewhat more flexible
programming practices.

	But what comes to C.. IMO, it is typed all right, but very
weakly.  That results in great flexibility and efficiency, but with the
expense of a certain unsafety.  Which counts more depends on your
mileage... :-).

Kari.
P.S. Oh, and I think I forgot 'new's from my previous posting.  In fact
I'm not so sure about that.. maybe someone could correct this?

--
Kari Grano	grano@cs.helsinki.fi	Hey, my opinions are just mine..
	"I've got a thousand telephones that don't ring" - R.Z.