Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!mcnc!rti!sheol!throopw
From: throopw@sheol.UUCP (Wayne Throop)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: C strongly typed?
Message-ID: <0500@sheol.UUCP>
Date: 10 Mar 90 23:49:46 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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> From: flc@n.sp.cs.cmu.edu (Fred Christianson)
> From Aho, Sethi and Ullman's _Compilers,_Principles,_Techniques,_and_Tools_:
> 	A language is strongly typed if its compiler can guarantee that 
> 	the programs it accepts will execute without type errors ...
>	For example if we first declare
>		table: array[0..255] of char;
>		i: integer
>	and then compute table[i], a compiler cannot in general guarantee
>	that during execution, the value of i will lie in the range 0 to 255.

By this definition, are there ANY stronly typed languages in the
algol family?  I can't think of any strongly typed languages by this
definition that are in what I'd call practial use.  Can anybody else?
Certainly Ada, ModulaII, and Pascal all fail this test, do they not?

And a general objection to this definition is that it doesn't
define a gradiation; it defines "strongly typed" as a binary
property, so that one language is not "more strongly typed" than
another... it either Is or it Isn't.  This doesn't follow the
usual thoughts about strong typeing.
--
Wayne Throop <backbone>!mcnc!rti!sheol!throopw or sheol!throopw@rti.rti.org