Re^6: There's Only One Way To Do It

Thanks for the clarification. From your definition, isn't Perl weakly typed in addition to strongly typed? Because in a scalar you can store a string or number (and other things as well). And Perl easily converts between numbers and strings for you.

Comment on Re^6: There's Only One Way To Do It

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re^6: There's Only One Way To Do It by herveus (Prior) on Apr 07, 2004 at 10:59 UTC
Howdy! That depends on what you mean when you say "type". I chose to set the values for "type" as "scalar", "array", and "hash", being the fundamental data types (and ignoring some other, more esoteric, flavors). The number/string distinction is, in my consideration, not a part of the "type"; numbers and strings are each scalars. Think of them as an external representation. Some data may not have a meaningful numeric representation, but consider also a hex representation as another flavor. Regardless of the representation, the datum is a single item -- a scalar. It may be an encoding of multiple values that can be teased apart, but that, again, does not make it then a hash or an array. yours, Michael	[reply]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.

Re: Re^6: There's Only One Way To Do It
by herveus (Prior) on Apr 07, 2004 at 10:59 UTC

That depends on what you mean when you say "type". I chose to set the values for "type" as "scalar", "array", and "hash", being the fundamental data types (and ignoring some other, more esoteric, flavors). The number/string distinction is, in my consideration, not a part of the "type"; numbers and strings are each scalars.

Think of them as an external representation. Some data may not have a meaningful numeric representation, but consider also a hex representation as another flavor. Regardless of the representation, the datum is a single item -- a scalar. It may be an encoding of multiple values that can be teased apart, but that, again, does not make it then a hash or an array.

yours,
Michael

[reply]