Re: another take on hackers and painters

[Guy Steele - Sun Microsystems Labs <address@hidden>]

   Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 09:48:11 -0600
   From: Jerry Jackson <Jerry.Jackson@Sun.COM>
   CC: ll1-discuss@ai.mit.edu
   Subject: Re: another take on hackers and painters
   
   
   
   Matt Hellige wrote:
   
   > [Dan Sugalski <dan@sidhe.org>]
   > 
   >>At 5:00 PM -0400 5/20/03, John Clements wrote:
   >>
   >>>...
   >>>
   >>>Depends what you mean by "a type problem."  If I'm adding a number 
   >>>and a string, that's definitely a "type problem,"
   >>>
   >>Is it? What's wrong with 1 + "3" producing 4?
   >>
   > 
   > Wow... That just makes me cringe... And sets off my "perl proximity"
   > alarm. By the same token, why not have 1 + "3" produce the string "13"?
   > 
   
   Heh, heh.  That's what Java does... :-)
   
With the unfortunate consequence, I might add, that
the "+" operator fails to be associative:

   ("foo" + 1) + 3   =>   "foo13"
   "foo" + (1 + 3)   =>   "foo4"

--Guy