On Tuesday, April 29, 2014 4:41:52 PM UTC+1, Patrick O'Leary wrote:
>
> It might be easier to understand if we start by stripping away the
> constraints and the function syntax and look just at the array type.
>
> Array{Real} is a concrete type. It's an array whose elements are all
> subtypes of the abstract type Real.
>
> Array{T} is a family of types. It describes a whole bunch of types,
> including Array{Real}, but also including Array{Float64}, Array{All} and
> Array{Bob}. T can itself be either abstract--a heterogenous array--or
> concrete.
>
> The constrained type variable {T<:Real}(::Array{T}) still describes a
> family of types, but that family is smaller. Array{All} and Array{Bob} are
> out.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
Thank you, Patrick. We have now covered how types for arrays currently do
work (which I mostly understood), and corrected my mistake in point 3 of my
original post. We haven't yet started to address the real point of my post
yet, though. I'd be interested to hear more on that.
