type safety (was Re: FAQ terminology harmonisation)

[Thomas Lindgren]

--- Chris Pressey <cpressey@REDACTED> wrote:
> > It depends a bit on what you mean by type, I'd say
> --
> > you can have exactly the same problem in SML. But
> I
> > think you have a good point that it would
> sometimes be
> > useful to have support for user-defined data types
> > guaranteed to be distinct from all other types.
> 
> Not just useful, but required in order to honestly
> say that Erlang is
> typesafe.

In that case, I think we have different definitions of
type safeness.

To clarify, what I mean by type safeness is roughly
that integers cannot be mistaken for atoms, conses
can't be cast to tuples, etc, in contrast with
languages such as C or C++. "Strong" as opposed to
"weak" types, as it once was known. User-defined types
and ADTs are above and beyond that, using this
definition.

Anyway, my main point previously was not to define
type safeness, but to indicate a nice property which
some languages have and some do not, so I think I'll
leave it at that.

Best,
Thomas


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