Friday 14 March 2003 20:06, Michael Lazzaro wrote: > 3) If an "untyped" var is used for a typed parameter, a simple > dataflow analysis is used to determine whether the compiler can > guarantee that, at that point, an "untyped" var will _always_ > contain values of a known, specific type. If so, the type is > inferred (silently or with a warning, according to pragma?) > Otherwise, it is a compile-time error.
Uhh.. I am emphatically against this. We cannot depend on the compiler data-flow analysis because: - It won't be very good (because of perl's ultra-dynamism) - It may improve as we put more effort on the compiler, so some program that works in perl6.4 may fail on perl6.2 - It may degrade as we add more (evil) features on the language. (Or otherwise it may prevent us from adding more (evil) features in the language in some future without breaking BC) - It's hard to predict. I would rather have an allways-complain or an allways-forgive policy, than to have a complain-or-forgive-depending-on-the-weather- -in-Canary-Islands policy. -angel
