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From: hall@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu (Marty Hall)
Subject: Re: Lisp vs Java vs C++ vs...
Message-ID: <Dt56pL.9tt@aplcenmp.apl.jhu.edu>
Organization: JHU/APL Research Center, Hopkins P/T CS Faculty
References: <TMB.96Jun11083056@best.best.com> <31C1770B.6E39@bway.net> <TMB.96Jun14162545@best.best.com>
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 11:32:09 GMT
Lines: 17

In article <TMB.96Jun14162545@best.best.com> tmb@best.com (.) writes:

>SML has a static type system that I find rather non-intrusive, even
>though it does not (yet!) have dynamic typing facilities.  

But it does have type variables. For those who haven't seen them, they
are sort of like a more powerful version of C++ templates, letting you
specify an unnamed type. For instance, for a sorting routine you could
specify that the inputs are a list and a function. The list has
elements of type foo, and the function takes two foo's as input and
returns a boolean. This is all completely type safe and can be checked
at compile time. SML'ers call it "alpha" instead of "foo" to use the
same convention as the simply typed lambda calculus.

					- Marty
(proclaim '(inline skates))
<http://www.apl.jhu.edu/~hall/lisp.html>
