Re: Fun-O Basic Edition Compiler

[Jeffrey Siegal <address@hidden>]

Jason Trenouth wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Jeffrey Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com>
> To: <info-dylan@ai.mit.edu>
> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2001 5:15 AM
> Subject: Re: Fun-O Basic Edition Compiler
> 
> 
> 
>>Bruce Hoult wrote:
>>
>>>One niceish thing about Dylan is that if you decide that you'd like
>>>*all* integers in the program to overflow to bignums instead of wrapping
>>>then all you have to do is rename <general-integer> to <integer> in the
>>>imports section.
>>>
>>Actually, what I prefer is the behavior that is documented, but not
>>implemented, in Stalin, which is for fixints to trap if they overflow.
>>Transparently overflowing to bignums may hide a program bug or a hidden
>>assumption that has been broken.
>>
> 
> Actually, not transparently overflowing to bignums usually causes more
> problems by exposing hidden assumptions...

I'm afraid I disagree.  If the programmer does not expect a number to 
get large, and it does, something has usually gone wrong.

 
> You can always declare a particular value to have a more restricted type.

Is there such a type in Dylan?