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From: olson@juliet.ll.mit.edu ( Steve Olson)
Subject: Re: Dynamic typing (part 3)
In-Reply-To: nix@asd.sgi.com's message of 2 May 91 22:16:54 GMT
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Date: 3 May 91 11:58:56

In article <NIX.91May2231654@valis.asd.sgi.com> nix@asd.sgi.com (Sold to the highest Buddha) writes:
	   It seems to me that a language with a good type inference
   algorithm and optional type constraints provided by the programmer
   should be able to do this in many cases, eliminating type tags when
   they aren't necessary.  If you're a static typing fan, you tell the
   compiler to whine at you if it can't optimize out all type tags at
   compile time, and you have to provide extra type information to get
   the code to compile.

	   Is there any reason why this can't be done?  Are there any
   "dynamically typed" languages that do this?

Your preceeding wish list sounds like a design document for CMU's
"Python" Commom Lisp compiler.  I can't vouch for it personally,
(am eagerly awaiting a SunOS version) but the user's manual and compiler
design notes (FTP-able from CMU) look promising.

   Nix Thompson		nix@sgi.com		...!uunet!sgi!nix



--
-- Steve Olson
-- MIT Lincoln Laboratory
-- olson@juliet.ll.mit.edu
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