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[REBOL] Re: A question of function interface design

From: premshree::pillai::gmail::com at: 19-Jan-2005 20:08

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:31:25 +0100, Michael Berg <[mokkel--gmx--de]> wrote:
> > Given that Rebol is not strongly typed, is the second of these "idioms" > > I thought Rebol is strongly typed (but not statically) ... like a value > has always an assigned type.
Yes, REBOL _is_ strongly typed. Did anybody say otherwise? :-?
> About the rest: I prefer to have the interpreter checking the types of the > arguments if that is wished. Actually I would like to have real support
This is something debatable. Folks from the strong-dynamic typed kingdom would obviously not like the idea. However, there are clear benefits of having static type checking. The compromise to this solution would be to have _optional_ type checking. In fact, this is what's happening with Python. However, if there are type checkers (like pycheker for Python), it'd be nice. And I doubt there's one for REBOL as of now.
> for Design by Contract (pre- and postconditions and maybe > object-invariants), but I'm not sure whether that fits will with the Rebol > philosophy - but however I find in principle nothing bad in having it. I > know there is some old implementation of it at Rebol.org, but nobody seams > to use it - maybe because of some other reasons ? > > I guess if you return 'none in case of error, that would somewhat destroy > the purpose of a function (some precondition is always implied - if not > explicitely stated), unless returning 'none would be raised to some > standard, but then other problems occur (like Andreas Bolka stated in the > other post). Maybe that's why I like the DBC approach, you just state > what's else implicit in the function explicitely and the user/client of > the function has to take care to fullfill the precondition and everything > will work fine. > > Are there any comments regarding DBC being (un)useful for Rebol ? > > Michael > > -- > To unsubscribe from the list, just send an email to rebol-request > at rebol.com with unsubscribe as the subject. >
-- Premshree Pillai http://www.livejournal.com/~premshree