Many languages have the idea that if you assign a value of one type to a variable of another type, then the value will be converted to the same type as the variable. So in C, for example
float x = 2;
converts the integer “2” to a floating point “2.0” before assignment.
So far so good.
Today I received an email with the following header field:
From: java.lang.NullPointerException@248257-web11.element115.net
This is just outstanding! My best idea of how this happened is that a function intended to return a value of type email-address instead threw an exception, which was faithfully type-converted to an email address.
I will send a reply, just to see what happens.