in reply to Re^10: Strong typing and Type Safety.A multilanguage approach (implicit)
in thread Strong typing and Type Safety.A multilanguage approach

How can you coerce the choice of operators if the operator is monomorphic?

I have no idea what you mean. The evaluation of the operands coerces an SV to an IV, of course.

implicit conversion

I don't understand this logic. How is explicitly using a monomorphic operator which operates on numeric values any less explicit than performing a manual conversion operation through a method?

(I don't accept the "But it's easy to make a typo when using an operator!" argument because it's easy to make a typo when calling a method.)

  • Comment on Re^11: Strong typing and Type Safety.A multilanguage approach (implicit)

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Re^12: Strong typing and Type Safety.A multilanguage approach (implicit)
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 22, 2010 at 08:34 UTC

    How is explicitly using a monomorphic operator which operates on numeric values any less explicit than performing a manual conversion operation through a method?

    The addition operator operators on scalars, not numeric values; you can pass it a string if you so desire. The operator must coerce the string into a number in order to do the addition.

    The latter is explicit by definition. "Manual" is synonymous with "explicit".

    Implicit conversion is less explicit than explicit conversion.

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      The addition operator operators on scalars, not numeric values; you can pass it a string if you so desire. The operator must coerce the string into a number in order to do the addition.

      From perlop:

      Binary "+" returns the sum of two numbers.

      The operator is monomorphic. Again, how is using the binary numeric addition operator not explicit about the intention to treat its operands in a numeric fashion?

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        Monomorphic has nothing to do with it. You can have monomorphic operators that don't do any conversion (e.g. add), and you can have monomoprhic operators that do (e.g. to_int, +).

        You said yourself the addition operator coerces. What else is there to say.

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Re^12: Strong typing and Type Safety.A multilanguage approach (implicit)
by ikegami (Patriarch) on Nov 22, 2010 at 08:31 UTC
    ok, it seems I had the wrong definition for coercion. According to wikipedia, "coercion" is simply another way of saying "implicit conversion" ("in most languages", it adds).
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