Fergus writes:
> I think it's becoming clear by now that the theoretical disadvantages
> of undecidable type checking are often not significant in practice.
> Experience with C++, Gofer, ghc, Mercury, etc. all seems to confirm this.
In this context, people may find the paper _C++ Templates as Partial Evaluation_ by
Todd Veldhuizen (PEPM'99) interesting: it describes how it was discovered that C++
templates had accidentally introduced a compile-time Turing-complete functional/logic
language into C++, and how this is now used by numeric libraries to exceedingly useful
ends.
URL is http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/tveldhui/papers/
--KW 8-)
--
: Keith Wansbrough, MSc, BSc(Hons) (Auckland) ------------------------:
: PhD Student, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, England. :
: (and recently of the University of Glasgow, Scotland. [><] ) :
: Native of Antipodean Auckland, New Zealand: 174d47' E, 36d55' S. :
: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/kw217/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] :
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