Typing in Pascal and C is a Failure

Many spurious errors

• So programmers ignore them

Proliferation of type-defeating features:

• Casts (C) (char *)(&f)

• Automatic conversions (C)

        int i;
        i = 1.42857;          /* Silently truncated to 1 */

• Variadic functions (C)

• Union types (C and Pascal both)

        var u: case tag: integer of
                 0: (intval: integer);
                 1: (realval: real);
                 2: (stringval: array [1..20] of character);
                 3: (boolval: boolean);
               end;
            r : real;
        
        u.intval = 1428457;
        r = u.realval;          { Gack }

• Abuse of the separate compilation facility (Pascal)