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Strong Typing

• Advantage of strong typing: allows the detection of the misuses of variables that result in type errors

• Languages:
  • FORTRAN 77 is not: parameters, EQUIVALENCE
  • Pascal is not: variant records
  • Modula-2 is not: variant records, WORD type
  • C and C++ are not: parameter type checking can be avoided; unions are not type checked
  • Ada is, almost (UNCHECKED CONVERSION is loophole)
  • (Java is similar)

• Coercion rules strongly affect strong typing--they can weaken it considerably (C++ versus Ada)