Daniel-Constantin Mierla writes:
rant?!? maybe you got the message wrong. It was about the purpose of configuration file and the target users for it.
your message was very emotional. you defined the target users in your message. i have not seen that discussed or agreed earlier. my claim is that current config language very much resembles a programming language.
please tell a non-programmer, how he/she can easily test if a var holds integer 0 value?
I don't see the relation of this question with auto-conversion debate and type checking.
it has, because if target is a non-programmer, then it should be very easy to do. that was the problem where this whole discussion started.
The variable is set somehow, either taken from database of directly in config. Who does the logic know what comes there. If I do $var(x) = 1; I know it is integer. I haven't found a need to test the type of variable so far, but, if someone has an there is no function for finding out the type of value, it can be written.
here is a real world example for you: make a single htable query and find out, if the resulting value is string "0" or if there was no result at all. for performance reasons i don't accept answer where the query is done two times.
So, really, this is not anything like flame war, just making sure we don't rewrite c interpreter, because nobody is going to use it.
you are exaggerating. there is big difference between type safety and c language programming.
-- juha