Re: Static typing (Was Re: Better support for garbage collection)

[Robert A Duff <bobduff@world.std.com>]

"Ken Garlington" <Ken.Garlington@computer.org> writes:

> OK, that's at least internally consistent. However, the number of
> ambiguities now is significantly expanded. For example:
> 
> J : constant := 1; -- legitimate named number, or did I mean to type
> 
> J : constant Character := 1;

Named numbers are a kludge.  I would eliminate them.  There are better
ways to achieve what named numbers can do.

By the way, note that all this talk about changing the rules for
literals, and eliminating named numbers is *not* meant as a serious
proposal for Ada -- I'm playing around with language design ideas.
Obviously, many of these ideas are incompatible with Ada.

> J: constant String := a; -- is this a literal "a", or a reference to
> something that I forgot to import? Both are possible...

The a is an identifier, not a literal, and I don't propose to change
that.

> I'm not sure I want a language that has a design goal of catching faults to
> be loosened in this regard. (I'm not sure I want it to be *tightened* either
> in this regard, because I am still human, after all. :)

My proposal does not "loosen" -- in fact (other than the minor ".0"
thing), my proposal makes more programs illegal -- it tightens.

- Bob