Erlang Type System

[orbitz@REDACTED]

Yes thanks, from the previous post i realized my understanding of what 
dynamic and static typing meant.  I understand now.

Thanks

On Sep 18, 2005, at 4:38 PM, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> orbitz@REDACTED asked:
> 	As I understand it, with a dynamically typed language you can
> 	change the type of x.
>
> That is not a correct understanding.
>
> 	For instance in Python x = 1; x = 1.5;
>
> But in that example, nothing changed its type.
> 1 was and remained an integer.
> 1.5 was and remained a floating-point number.
>
> A more accurate statement would be that in a dynamically typed language
> "type" is a property of values rather than variables.
>
> 	Obviously we can't do that in Erlang.
>
> There are actually several senses in which you can.
> Each process has a process dictionary, which is in practice
> a hash table, and you can associate any kind of data with any
> key and you can change the kind of data associated with an existing 
> key.
>
> Once you leave the realm of primitive scalar types, Java is arguably
> a dynamically typed language, or at least was until 1.5.
>
> 	Most people tell me Erlang is still dynamically typed because
> 	the variable passed in a function can be of any type.
> 	
> Either "most people" are confused, or you are mis-reporting them.
> You cannot pass a variable to a function in Erlang.
>
> Since Erlang does not associate types with variables at compile time,
> it clearly isn't a statically typed language.  Since it has values of
> distinct and distinguishable types and has type-specific operations,
> it isn't an untyped language either.  What's left?
>