Type inference

Type inference, or implicit typing, refers to the ability to deduce automatically the type of a value in a programming language. It is a feature present in some strongly statically typed languages. It is often characteristic of — but not limited to — functional programming languages in general. Some languages that include type inference are: Ada, BitC, Boo, C# 3.0, Cayenne, Clean, Cobra, D, Delphi, Epigram, F#, Haskell, haXe, JavaFX Script, ML, M... more

Type inference, or implicit typing, refers to the ability to deduce automatically the type of a value in a programming language. It is a feature present in some strongly statically typed languages. It is often characteristic of — but not limited to — functional programming languages in general. Some languages that include type inference are: Ada, BitC, Boo, C# 3.0, Cayenne, Clean, Cobra, D, Delphi, Epigram, F#, Haskell, haXe, JavaFX Script, ML, Mythryl, Nemerle, OCaml, Oxygene, Scala, and Visual Basic .NET 9.0. This feature is planned for Fortress, C++0x and Perl 6. The ability to infer types automatically makes many programming tasks easier, leaving the programmer free to omit type annotations while maintaining some level of type safety. Explicitly converting to another data type is called "casting" (or a "cast"). In most programming languages, all values have a type which describes the kind of data a particular value describes. In some languages, the type of an expression is known... less