What is type safe in programming language

Needone App
3 min readDec 8, 2022

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Overview

Type safety in programming languages refers to the concept that variables and data structures are strongly typed and cannot be assigned values of different types. This means that the programming language will not allow the programmer to accidentally or intentionally assign a value of the wrong type to a variable or data structure. This helps to prevent errors and ensure the reliability and stability of the program.

Type safe in Swift

Type safety in Swift means that the language ensures that the types of variables and constants are checked and enforced at compile time. This means that the compiler will not allow operations to be performed on variables or constants that do not match their declared data types. This helps prevent type errors and unintended behavior in code, as the compiler will not allow operations that are not valid for a given data type. Type safety is a key feature of the Swift language, as it helps ensure that code is correct and predictable.

Swift is designed to be type safe, which means that it will not allow you to perform operations on variables that are not compatible with their defined type. . For example, if you have a variable of type Int (an integer value), you cannot perform operations on it that expect a String (a sequence of characters) value. If you try to do this, the Swift compiler will generate an error and prevent your code from being executed. See the following code:

Another example of type safe in Swift:

let myString = "Hello, world!"
let myInt = 42

// The following line of code would cause an error, because
// you cannot add a string and an integer together.
//let result = myString + myInt

// Instead, you would need to convert the integer to a string
// in order to add it to the other string.
let result = myString + String(myInt)

Type safety is an important feature of Swift, as it helps to prevent many common programming errors and makes it easier to write code that is predictable and reliable. By enforcing strict rules about the types of values that can be used in different situations, Swift helps to ensure that your code will behave as you expect it to and will avoid unexpected or incorrect results.

Type safe in Kotlin

Type safety is also a concept in the programming language Kotlin. Like Swift, Kotlin is a type-safe language, which means that all values have a specific type and it is not possible to use values of the wrong type in your code. This helps prevent errors and ensures that your code behaves as expected.

Here is an example of how type safety works in Kotlin:

val myString = "Hello, world!"
val myInt = 42

// The following line of code would cause an error, because
// you cannot add a string and an integer together.
//val result = myString + myInt

// Instead, you would need to convert the integer to a string
// in order to add it to the other string.
val result = myString + myInt.toString()

In this example, we have defined a string and an integer. We attempt to add the two values together, but this is not allowed because they are not the same type. Instead, we need to convert the integer to a string before adding it to the other string. This is an example of how type safety prevents us from using values of the wrong type in our code, which helps ensure that our code behaves as expected.

Originally published at https://needone.app on December 8, 2022.

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