(Or "coercion") The abilty of some compilers
to automatically insert
type conversion functions where an
expression of one type is used in a context where another type
is expected.
A common example is coercion of integers to reals so that
an expression like sin(1) is compiled as sin(integerToReal(1))
where sin is of type Real -> Real.
A coercion is usually performed automatically by the compiler
whereas a
cast is an
explicit type conversion inserted by
the programmer.
See also
subtype.