[Types-sig] Static name checking

[Martijn Faassen]

Paul Prescod wrote:

[freezing system]
> A frozen name checker would work by loading a document and parsing it
> looking for every reference to the name "frozen". Then it would look at
> the next line and verify that all referenced objects really are frozen.
> Then it would check that frozen namespaces are not modified. Of course a
> frozen name checker isn't trivial but it also isn't brain surgery.
> Anyone bored and underworked out there?

But what do you do with lists (for instance)? You can't check at
compile-time if an object that comes from a list is a string, and
integer, or an object. If you then try to refer to a name in it
(object.foo()) then you run into trouble with this concept. Or am I
missing something?

[snip]
> I am not voting for or against the continuation of the types-sig. At
> this point we probably need code more than talk.

I think at least I need a little bit more talk before I could come even
close to designing the code for your proposal (not that I'm offering
right now :). Currently it's not clear to me how you'd do name checking
without some form of static type checking or type inference...

Regards,

Martijn