Revised RFC on range design for D2

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Sergey Gromov wrote:
> Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:19:01 -0500,
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> My point is that I agree with all concerns you are raising but I am not
>> sure they warrant adding a language feature.
> 
> I hoped for some reason that these features could simplify the compiler.  
> Now when I think about it I conclude that I was probably wrong.  
> Explicit properties is definitely a feature, even though it seems easy 
> to implement. Injectons could help if Walter were forced into supporting 
> different scoping rules for unified call syntax, but if a.f(b) stays 
> strictly a sugar for f(a,b) this feature helps nothing from a compiler 
> standpoint.
> 
> So I'll probably agree that these features don't add much to the 
> language, as D doesn't add much to C except safety, productivity, 
> maintainability and claritiy.  The clarity/maintainability vs genericity 
> is a tradeoff which is completely in Walter's hands.

Very wise words.

I think we all agree that there are some annoyances related to the whole 
property business, among which the main one is:

writeln = 4;

That is quite indefensible :o|. I consider the others rather minor, but 
that's just a personal opinion.

How about this. Maybe if we attacked this annoyance in particular, that 
would be a large bang for the buck without a landslide change in the 
compiler. We only need some way to inform the compiler, "yes, it's ok to 
call a.b(c) as a.b = c". Ideas?


Andrei