What is Expressiveness in a Computer Language

[Dr.Ruud]

Rob Thorpe schreef:
> Dr.Ruud:
>> Marshall:

>>> "dynamic types." I don't have a firm definition for
>>> that term, but my working model is runtime type tags. In which
>>> case, I would say that among statically typed languages,
>>> Java does have dynamic types, but C does not. C++ is
>>> somewhere in the middle.
>>
>> C has union.
>
> That's not the same thing.

That is your opinion. In the context of this discussion I don't see any
problem to put C's union under "dynamic types".


> The value of a union in C can be any of a
> set of specified types.  But the program cannot find out which, and
> the language doesn't know either.
>
> With C++ and Java dynamic types the program can test to find the type.

When such a test is needed for the program with the union, it has it.

-- 
Affijn, Ruud

"Gewoon is een tijger."