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Re: Types in Mathematica

• To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
• Subject: [mg62836] Re: Types in Mathematica
• From: Bill Rowe <readnewsciv at earthlink.net>
• Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 00:43:03 -0500 (EST)
• Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

On 12/5/05 at 3:37 AM, hattons at globalsymmetry.com (Steven T. Hatton)
wrote:

>I have come to realize that there are (or appear to be) certain
>limitations as to what can be done with type conversions in
>comparison to how they are used in C++.  For example, in C++ it is
>possible to create type conversion operators which will be invoked
>according to the parameters accepted by a function.  For example,
>you might have some kind of counter object which automatically
>converts to an integer when passed as a variable of integer type.

>I don't believe I could do something similar with Mathematica.  For
>instance, if I have a type Vector3D[x,y,z], I don't see a way of
>getting that to convert to a List[x,y,z] when passed to an
>arbitrary function taking a List as an argument.

I don't understand your comment here. I can easily do the following:

In[3]:=
a = Vector3D[x, y, z]; 
b = List @@ a; 
Head[b]

Out[5]=List

Given this, why shouldn't Apply (@@) be considered a "type" conversion in this context?
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