[klibertp]

> the fact that you need to differentiate behavior for numbers and strings

That's actually not exactly right: for example in Forth you really have no types at all.

Also, if somewhat uses a word such as "unityped" or "type with infinitely many variants" you should immediately know that any mention that "there are types, alright, just checked on runtime" will be immediately rejected. Majority of static typing fanatics are like that.

[jerf]

"Majority of static typing fanatics are like that."

That's not the problem. The problem is that to a first approximation, every language is "type safe" in the sense that you can't add a string to a number. Even in those languages where it looks like you can, it's because of a certain usually-limited set of automatic coercions, not because you can actually add a number to a string.

Truly adding a number to a string looks like this:

   number: 0x000000000000002a
   string: 0x7ffb000000007264
   result: 0x7ffb00000000728e

The string is, of course, a pointer, and the result, of course, is gibberish. This is why "no" languages to speak of implement this form of "untyped language"; it isn't what anybody actually wants. (Assembler, of course, has it, but that's an exception for obvious reasons.)

A term that describes essentially 100% of languages is not a useful one, so static typing usually refers to a language whose type system is somehow more restrictive at compile time than "Everything is a variant type and we'll work it out at runtime".

[klibertp]

> The problem is that to a first approximation, every language is "type safe" in the sense that you can't add a string to a number

We're not discussing a concept of "type safety" here at all, but rather a concept of "untypedness". I just can't agree that for example Common Lisp (with CLOS), Smalltalk or Python are "untyped". They are not: untyped language is one which has no type errors both on compile time and runtime (unless I'm very . An obvious example is Assembler, but Forth or TCL qualify too. And quite a few others do too. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language#Typed_vers...

> so static typing usually refers to a language whose type system is somehow more restrictive at compile time than "Everything is a variant type and we'll work it out at runtime"

Again, it was never suggested that Tulip has "static types". It doesn't of course.

What I said is that it has types. I don't want to discuss how much better "static typing" is than "dynamic typing" or vice versa, this makes for a very boring discussion similar to Emacs vs. Vim and I'm not interested in it at all. I just object to the notion that "static types" are the only kind of types we can ever have in a language.

The problem is with "static typing fanatics", really. They'd like to bend the terminology in a way which helps them promote static typing, for example by equating all types with static types. This is both dishonest and unnecessary. No serious static typing advocate would do this (I hope) - static typing is a great idea able to defend on its own, there's no need to lie about "the other side" of the argument.

Well, all fanatics are like that. Way too much Kool-Aid, way too little critical thinking.

[jerf]

"I just can't agree that for example Common Lisp (with CLOS), Smalltalk or Python are "untyped"."

You completely missed my point, as evidenced by the fact you appear to believe I just claimed that when I in fact claimed the exact opposite, which is that since darned near nothing is "untyped", that's not a useful concept to use in discussing whether something is "typed" or not.

Assembler is truly untyped. Forth is untyped. Tcl is not untyped... it simply has a built-in coercian rule that it'll turn everything into strings if it doesn't like what you do to it. It's as close as you can get, but it isn't untyped.

A concept that describes only two languages is not all tha useful.

"They'd like to bend the terminology in a way which helps them promote static typing, for example by equating all types with static types."

Again, the fact that you appear to have completely missed my point is evidenced by the fact that I drew a distinction whereby languages may be "dynamically" or "statically" typed but darned near nothing is "untyped".

With all due respect, you're not in a position to be claiming that other people are "fanatics"... you don't have the information to come to that conclusion because you appear to be incapable of reading what people say, because you've already decided in advance what they're going to say. Yes, that makes the world look like... well... anything you want, really, but it's not a true description. You are not in a position to be complaining about other people's "critical thinking" skills when you yourself aren't even accurately gathering information with which to critically think.

[klibertp]

> Tcl is not untyped...

Wikipedia page says otherwise. Why won't you edit it and fix it if you're sure it's a mistake?

> A concept that describes only two languages is not all that useful.

Which is why you decide to change the meaning of this concept? Or what are you getting at? Do you want to say that "lack of static typing" equals "untyped"?

> With all due respect, you're not in a position to be claiming that other people are "fanatics"... you don't have the information to come to that conclusion because you appear to be incapable of reading what people say, because you've already decided in advance what they're going to say. Yes, that makes the world look like... well... anything you want, really, but it's not a true description. You are not in a position to be complaining about other people's "critical thinking" skills when you yourself aren't even accurately gathering information with which to critically think.

You know, there's a difference between my attacking a general notion some (unspecified) people share and your directly insulting me. I wonder why did you choose to read my comment as targeted at you personally? Do you feel like a "static typing fanatic"? Did you write any of the things I was complaining about? Did you say that Python is untyped? Did you say that the only kind of types we can have are static types?

I'm re-reading your comments and can't see any of these. I wonder, why the heck would you, then, assume I was criticizing you specifically? Are you really going to defend people who say those things? You know better and, if you read our conversation once again, you'll see that we're in an agreement (except for TCL). Don't you see I'm talking TO you, not ABOUT you? Is my written English that poor (well, it may be so, sorry)?

[TazeTSchnitzel]

B and early C are untyped like this

[exprL]

Early C? The parent described accurately how pointer addition in C works for all char pointers. (Well, other than the “nobody wants that” part, because that's how you skip n bytes of a string.)

[TazeTSchnitzel]

C has pointer arithmetic

[iopq]

you can easily add a number to a char in C and get a jibberish character, which is why C is a weakly typed language

[exprL]

Not true (technically). When you add an integer to a char, you get an integer. (If you add a floating point number, the result is such as well.)

You can, of course, use the integer you got like a char (after all, C's char is a small integer type) to get your gibberish. You can also use a floating point number as a char, because C has lax implicit conversions.

[iopq]

If you add '!' to '#' you get 'D', which is non-sense in any high level language.

[jerf]

Not true; you added the byte that happens to be identified in ASCII by !, 33, to the byte that happens to be identified in ASCII by #, 35, and get 68, which is D. This is all perfectly sensible and type safe, two 8-bit numbers being added to produce another 8-bit number; you are only confused by the surface syntax. There's plenty of high-level languages that will let you do this; there's all sorts of reasons to make numbers and the ASCII chars they represent easily usable for each other in source code.

[iopq]

No, I didn't. I actually added the character '!' to '#'. The C language doesn't DISTINGUISH characters from their numerical representations. That's where I say it's weakly typed. It does not have an actual character type, it only has 8 bit numbers.

Of course in C it is perfectly logical. I am pointing out that it is not as strongly typed as other type systems that have richer types.