I realize now that there is clearly no standard definition of "strongly typed".
For me it related to type casting pointers.
In "Weakly Typed" C/C++...
Foo f;
Foo *pf = &f;
Bar *pb = (Bar*) pf;
Bar& b = *pf;
Here, f points to a piece of memory it will treat as if it was in the structure of a Foo. b points to *the same* piece of memory and instead it will treat as if it was in the structure of a Bar. Foo and Bar may have totally unrelated structures. This is what I was thinking of in terms of weak typing.
I thought you couldn't do that in Perl - hence I called in strongly typed.
(It looks like you might be able to something similiar with the pack/unpack magic mentioned above - although it is certainly not a common practice.)
-Andrew.
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