How is duck typing different from the old 'variant' type and/or interfaces?

Question

I keep seeing the phrase \"duck typing\" bandied about, and even ran across a code example or two. I am way too lazy busy to do my own research, can someone tel

Answer 1

The simple answer is variant is weakly typed while duck typing is strongly typed.

Duck typing can be summed up nicely as "if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, acts like a duck, then it's a duck." It computer science terms consider duck to be the following interface.

interface IDuck {
  void Quack();
}

Now let's examine Daffy

class Daffy {
  void Quack() {
    Console.WriteLine("Thatsssss dispicable!!!!");
  }
}

Daffy is not actually an IDuck in this case. Yet it acts just like a Duck. Why make Daffy implement IDuck when it's quite obvious that Daffy is in fact a duck.

This is where Duck typing comes in. It allows a type safe conversion between any type that has all of the behaviors of a IDuck and an IDuck reference.

IDuck d = new Daffy();
d.Quack();

The Quack method can now be called on "d" with complete type safety. There is no chance of a runtime type error in this assignment or method call.