Four terms:
- Strong typing
- Weak typing
- Static typing
- Dynamic typing
I used to think I knew what all of those mean. Now I know I don't. It seems that very few people can agree on the definitions but they're quite happy to argue the merits of them.
strong typing
merlyn on 2004-12-14T20:11:54
I used to believe in strong typing... then my keyboards kept wearing out.
Murky Terms
ziggy on 2004-12-14T20:29:37
All four terms are a bit murky in Perl.
- Perl is strongly typed, because there is absolutely, positively no way in Hell you can coerce a hashref into a listref or a coderef.
- Perl is weakly typed, because you really don't care what happens if you use an integer as a string, or a string as an integer. It all just works.
- Perl is statically typed because the compiler creates $foo as a scalar variable, and it will always remain so. $foo will never be a list, hash or subroutine.
- Perl is dynamically typed because $foo can hold an integer now, a string later, and a coderef in between.
Confused yet?
;-)
Type types
brian_d_foy on 2004-12-15T06:03:32
Don't forget that Perl is also stereo typed, mis typed, and best of all, my type(d).
