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points by uecker 2 days ago | 0 comments
C is not a weakly typed language, this is just nonsense. There is also [[nodiscard]] which you can use to make sure a return value is handled.
[–] muvlon 2 days ago
What is a weakly typed language to you? To me, implicit type conversions are a big part of the definition, and C is flush with those (void* converts to any pointer, all kinds of number conversions, arrays decay to pointers, functions convert to pointers, lvalue conversion strips const/volatile etc.).

However, I also think "weakly typed" is not a well-defined concept, everyone seems to apply it differently. In particular, it seems to mostly mean "playing it loose with types in a way that I don't like".

[–] uecker 2 days ago
Yes, it is not well-defined. But most conversions, function calls, and accesses are strongly typed in C, so I would not call it weakly typed.

Implicit conversion could be seen as weak typing, but it is mostly limited to specific arithmetic operations in C. I would see implicit conversions as problematic if they allowed operations that make no sense. Decay of arrays and function to pointer conversion also do not seem problematic to me for this reason.

Void pointers are also weakly typed, but they are specifically designed for this. So if you do not want this behavior, one would simply not use them. It is a bit like using "unsafe" in Rust.

There are certainly stronger typed languages, but on the full range C is more on the strongly than weakly typed side in my opinion. A language that allows arbitrary implicit conversions between pointers, would be weakly typed, or which allows calling functions with wrongly typed arguments (which was true in the past for C a long time ago)

[–] adgjlsfhk1 2 days ago
C is definitely not the most weakly typed (e.g. Javascript/PHP are both weaker), but IMO C is weaker than python in that python will give you a runtime type error if you do something invalid, while in C you cast something and just get UB. Most higher level strongly typed languages are able to make their casts checked because they have generics to remove the need for 99% of them, but C is missing those features and thus has to rely much more heavily on unchecked and unsafe runtime casts.
[–] uecker 2 days ago
Casts are escape hatches just like "unsafe" in Rust. You can write safe generics in C that either do not use casts or wrap all unsafe operations behind type-safe interfaces.