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)