literals

[Fawzi Mohamed]

On 29-mar-10, at 16:57, so wrote:

>> The example you give cannot be solved easily and efficiently (find  
>> the type to use in a function) without some kind of inference based  
>> on the return type, annotations, or Hindley Milner style type  
>> inference.
>> annotation don't scale, using inference based on the return type is  
>> very difficult and not doable in general, few languages do it  
>> (aldor for example did it), Hindley Milner is incompatible with C.
>>
>> Please note that (possibly due to my C background) I like to put  
>> some type annotations, in my (limited) experience that pays off  
>> also with ML style languages, otherwise when you have ambiguity  
>> small errors can change the called functions and give surprising  
>> results.
>>
>> Fawzi
>
> Finally i am able to explain it with 2 words, Hindley Milner :)
> I want credit too! i also found it independently!

ehm actually Hindley Milner is not enough for what you requested, it  
can find types of functions, but integers are still separated from  
floats.
It can't cope well with incompatible overloads or conversions (they  
have type a->b)...

what you want is really return type based inference something that is  
hard, as said as far as I know only aldor did that

> Thanks for the explanation, i don't really like non-system, non- 
> generic languages, non-D like languages.
> Especially when a language has dumb reasons for not providing an  
> utility. (Java operator overloading case)
> D is the best choice for me by miles and i can learn to live with  
> casts as i did in C++.
>
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