It seems in the end the thread is really about whether CFML declarations should imply their type. Obviously, CFML is loosely typed so a declaration of a certain type means nothing. On the plus side, declaring the type to be the same as the expected type does provide documentation benefits. On the negative side, it does add overhead and can't lead to incorrect assumptions about the actual type of the variable.
With the above out there, let me just add a bit more. Providing tooling for a loosely typed language is tough since you have to almost build an interpreter just to figure out what a variable's type is. If the tool could have something to make a guess with then a good portion of the time it might be right. All of this leads me to think that some form of strict annotation is in order. In other words, the developer should indicate in source what type the variable is supposed to be. Possibly this could be done with declarations as suggested already. Another possibility is using the cfproperty tag, which effectively annotations fields for web services. Finally, one could use a CFML comment of a certain form to provide the annotation. Personally, I think comment-based annotations suck. In fact, I would say Java 1.5's annotations suck. However, the cfproperty idea seems to have merit to me. -Matt ---------------------------------------------------------- You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the words 'unsubscribe cfcdev' in the message of the email. CFCDev is run by CFCZone (www.cfczone.org) and supported by Mindtool, Corporation (www.mindtool.com). An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
