Re: Pointers to "why C behaves like that ?"

"Sander Vesik" <sander@haldjas.folklore.ee> writes:
  >Joachim Durchholz <joachim_d@gmx.de> wrote:
  >> jacob navia wrote:
  >>>
  >>> fn(a)
  >>> {
  >>> b = a;
  >>> }
  >>>
  >>> How can you know what "a" is?
  >>
  >> "a" is of type ANY, or Object, or Equ, or whatever happens to be the
  >> most general type that allows comparisons for equality. Type inference
  >> will not produce a more specific definition of "a" or "b" at this
  >> point. Actually that's OK - there's no need to actually nail the type
  >> down at this point.
  >
  >Depends. Do you want to be able to do separate compilation and be able
  >to get a shared library out of the code or no?


Sometimes yes, sometimes no. But either way, there's still no need
to actually nail the type down at this point.


  >Assuming that everybody will have code for your library around and
  >always does full program compilation is extremely unscalable.


Whole-program compilation isn't necessary. The other approach is to just
generate polymorphic code for `fn' that will handle any suitable type.


--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au> | "I have always known that the pursuit
The University of Melbourne | of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh> | -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

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