Justin Johansson wrote: > Ellery Newcomer wrote: >> Ellery Newcomer wrote: >>> Bill Baxter wrote: >>>> Yes, Yigal said basically that. The question I have is what practical >>>> difference does that make to the language? >>>> Seems no different from defining the empty tuple to be void, then >>>> renaming void to unit. >>>> >>>> >>>> --bb >>> If you have unit distinct from void, you could use it for what Andrei >>> mentioned a while back. Something to do with determining a function will >>> never return because it always throws, etc. >> >> then again, maybe not. > > From my memory of Scala, the top and bottom types are called > Unit and Nothing respectively. Unit is analogous to C,C++,D,Java void > and Nothing is the type of that returned by a function that never > returns (in other words nothing). I think the latter (the Nothing type) > is what Andrei was talking about before. > > FYI, a lot of articles about types systems are rather arduous to read > but I found this one written in more lay-speak by James Iry who is a > Scala advocate. > > Getting to the Bottom of Nothing At All. > > http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/08/getting-to-bottom-of-nothing-at-all.html > > > Enjoy the read; all about nothing, bits about tuples. No warranty for > academic accuracy though. > > -- Justin Johansson
nice link
