Perl does have types, they're just not int, byte, char, etc. Perl's types are far more useful: ARRAY, HASH, SCALAR and REGEXP, etc.

I agree that having a framework for assertions and encouraging asserting everywhere is good, there should be no need for checking whether a value resolves to a string that matches a regex for a primitive type.

There is a certain mindset of programmer that needs the boundaries of Java or equivalent. Such people should never be given the freedom of Perl (bitter experience of supporting systems written by this sort of programmer).

But Perl is Perl - use Perl types and assert for YOUR data design, not some arbitrary sizes set by some hardware.

-- iakobski