Limit the amount of auto-coercion Groovy++ does

At the moment, Groovy++ will automatically coerce some types to other types, 
but it seems to be implemented inconsistently. I would prefer to see no 
auto-coercion at all in Groovy++ (we have the 'as' operator after all), but if 
auto-coercion is kept, it should at least be minimal and consistent.

There's my original e-mail to the mailing list:

-----------------
I just noticed that this works:

    int i = "1"

but this doesn't:

    int i = "10"

Is that intentional? If so, why? I do find auto-coercion a little bit 
disconcerting in a static language at the best of times, but the above seems 
particularly obtuse and confusing. Also, the fact that everything can seemingly 
be automatically coerced to a String makes me wonder about the sense in 
declaring anything of type String. Does it only happen at variable 
initialisation time?

In fact, I noticed that these are fine:

    String str = 1000
    String str2 = new Date()
    String str3 = new File("")

as is:

    String myMethod(String str) { return str.reverse() }

    println myMethod(1000)

but a Date cannot be passed as an argument:

    println myMethod(new Date())   // <-- compile error

Note that I was testing the above in STS, but I'm assuming that the compile 
errors are coming from Groovy++ compiler.

Original issue reported on code.google.com by p.ledbr...@gmail.com on 15 May 2011 at 5:19

ajwang / groovypptest

Limit the amount of auto-coercion Groovy++ does #378