[EMAIL PROTECTED] schrieb: > Joachim Durchholz wrote: >> > A type is the encoding of these properties. A type >>> varying over time is an inherent contradiction (or another abuse of the >>> term "type"). >> No. It's just a matter of definition, essentially. >> E.g. in Smalltalk and Lisp, it does make sense to talk of the "type" of >> a name or a value, even if that type may change over time. > > OK, now we are simply back full circle to Chris Smith's original > complaint that started this whole subthread, namely (roughly) that > long-established terms like "type" or "typing" should *not* be > stretched in ways like this, because that is technically inaccurate and > prone to misinterpretation.
Sorry, I have to insist that it's not me who's stretching terms here. All textbook definitions that I have seen define a type as the set/operations/axioms triple I mentioned above. No mention of immutability, at least not in the definitions. Plus, I don't see any necessity on insisting on immutability for the definition of "type". Otherwise, you'd have to declare that Smalltalk objects truly don't have a type (not even an implied one), and that would simply make no sense: they do in fact have a type, even though it may occasionally change. Regards, Jo -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
