On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 7:58 AM, Eelco <hoogendoorn.ee...@gmail.com> wrote: > What you are talking about goes by the name of a 'dynamic type CHECK'; > some kind of syntactic sugar for something like > 'assert(type(obj)==sometype)'. Like a 'type cast', this is also a > runtime concept... > > By contrast, here is the first google hit for 'type constraint'. > > http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/d5x73970.aspx > > "...you can apply restrictions to the kinds of types ... by using a > type that is not allowed by a constraint, the result is a COMPILE-TIME > ERROR" (emphasis mine)
A constraint can be applied at compile time or at run time. It'd be valid to apply them at edit time, if you so chose - your editor could refuse to save your file until you fix the problem. Doesn't mean a thing. Python, by its nature, cannot do compile-time type checking. Under no circumstances, however, does this justify the use of the term "constraint" to mean "utterly different semantics of the same code". ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
