Re: strong/weak typing terminology (was Re: [Caml-list] Scripting in ocaml)

[Chad Perrin <perrin@apotheon.com>]

On Sat, Dec 23, 2006 at 06:42:02AM +1100, skaller wrote:
> 
> Your program is safe? Ok, so would you use it to
> control a nuclear reactor? Do you really think anyone
> cares if the reactor blows, whether the program
> core dumped, failed to core dump, or threw an exception?

That's health-safety, or life-safety, or something like that.  It's not
the same as type-safety.


> 
> to me safe means 'cannot fail'. But perhaps i misunderstand:
> it would be interesting to see another definition.

You're right, in a sense: safety means "cannot fail".  In the case of
type-safety, however, all that means is that the type system "cannot
fail".  The caveat is that, of course, if you evade the type system in
some way, its type-safety becomes to some extent immaterial.

-- 
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
print substr("Just another Perl hacker", 0, -2);