Hi --

On Thu, 20 May 2004, Sean Russell wrote:

> matz / ruby-lang.org (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote in message news:<1084872320.683534.4537.nullmailer / picachu.netlab.jp>...
> > I buy the flexibility from dynamic typing at the cost of compile-time
> > type check.  I don't think I am going to change my mind.
> 
> I want to make sure we're all on the same page.
> 
> My proposed solution is to have Ruby do a duck-typing check as part of
> the syntax checker ("-c").  This would be duck-type inferrence, so it
> doesn't require the programmer to declare variables or give them
> types.  It would simply raise a warning if someone tries to call
> "5.collect".  That is, ruby will load the parse tree as it does with
> -c, and then check to make sure that method calls are consistant with
> expected duck types. 

I think "expected duck types" may be a contradiction in terms :-)
Actually there's no reason not just to say: consistent with expected
types, since "duck type" is essentially a description of how Ruby
objects' types work.  In other words, the question of whether or not a
given object responds to a given message is (already, without 'duck')
a question about its type.  


David

-- 
David A. Black
dblack / wobblini.net