Re: Macros and little languages

[Neel Krishnaswami <address@hidden>]

Matthias Felleisen writes:
> 
> 2. If your library supports first-class functions, how do you
> exploit and use the type information? How do you do separate type
> checking? It is indeed similar to calling from language A to
> language B but for an LL language (is this the ll1 mailing list?) 
> it should be a "no overhead" operation to call between the two
> parts of the language.

I think there are some realistic cases where it's possible to make the
cross-over from the typed to the untyped world cheap. In particular,
if the language has multimethods, then you can catch all type errors
using the multiple dispatch mechanism -- ie, when passed some
arguments to a method, you can use the dispatch mechanism to identify
the correct function body and raise "message-not-understood" if the
arguments are ill-typed. Since the dynamic dispatch had to happen
anyway, you've effectively wiped out the cost of dynamic typing.

-- 
Neel Krishnaswami
neelk@alum.mit.edu