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Software Engineering vocabulary · Programming Concepts

Type coercion

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

nounCommon term

In software engineering, type coercion means: An automatic conversion from one data type to another while an expression or operation is evaluated.

In Turkish: örtük tür dönüşümü

How it is used

Use it when explaining surprising comparisons or arithmetic. Distinguish automatic conversion from an explicit cast.

Example sentences

  1. The comparison passed because type coercion converted the numeric string.

    The language changed the value's type for the comparison rather than comparing the original types directly.

  2. We removed implicit type coercion from the price calculation to make rounding clearer.

    Making conversion explicit exposes a step that was previously hidden in the arithmetic.

Common collocations

  • implicit type coercion
  • type coercion rules
  • data typeThe kind of value a column can hold, such as whole numbers, text, dates or true/false values. It controls what can be stored and how much space it takes.
  • stringA piece of text in a program, such as a name, a message or a password, stored as a sequence of characters and usually written inside quotes.

More terms: Programming Concepts

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