weak typing (programming) Strict enforcement of type rules but with well-defined exceptions or an explicit type-violation mechanism.
Weak typing is "friendlier" to the programmer than strong typing, but catches fewer errors at compile time. C and C++ are weakly typed, as they automatically coerce many types e.g. ints and floats. E.g. int a = 5; float b = a;
They also allow ignore typedefs for the purposes of type comparison; for example the following is allowed, which would probably be disallowed in a strongly typed language: typedef int Date; /* Type to represent a date */ Date a = 12345; int b = a; /* What does the coder intend? */
C++ is stricter than C in its handling of enumerated types: enum animal {CAT=0,DOG=2,ANT=3}; enum animal a = CAT; /* NB The enum is optional in C++ */ enum animal b = 1; /* This is a warning or error in C++ */ (2000-07-04)
