dmd 2.029 release

[Georg Wrede]

Don wrote:
> Georg Wrede wrote:
>> Don wrote:
>>> bearophile wrote:
>>>> This post is mostly for Andrei.
>>>> I have played with D2 a bit; probably I'll need months to digest it 
>>>> and its new Phobos2. While I explore Phobos I'll probably post some 
>>>> comments/bugs around here.
>>>>
>>>> After reading this:
>>>> http://blogs.msdn.com/vcblog/archive/2009/04/22/decltype-c-0x-features-in-vc10-part-3.aspx 
>>>>
>>>> I have tried to write a toy implementation of it in D2 (not using 
>>>> Phobos2 yet):
>>>>
>>>> import std.stdio: writeln;
>>>> import std.string: format;
>>>>
>>>> struct Watts {
>> ...
>>
>>>> Two things to improve:
>>>> 1) All structs must have a default built-in opString, a good 
>>>> representation can be:
>>>> StructName(field_value1, field_value2, field_value1, ...).
>>>> It's not a perfect textual representation, but it's WAY better than 
>>>> the current one (currently it shows just the struct name).
>>>> (Printing the module name before the struct name is bad, most times 
>>>> is just noise)
>>>
>>> No!
>>> <rant>
>>> toString() is one of the most dreadful features in D. Trying to 
>>> slightly improve it is a waste of time -- the whole concept needs to 
>>> be redone.
>>> It's horribly inflexible, tedious, and hugely inefficient. What more 
>>> could there be to hate?
>>>
>>> - the object being called has no context. It doesn't know what format 
>>> is desired, for example.
>>> - you can't emulate formatting of built-in types, NOT EVEN int! You 
>>> can't do left-align, pad with zeros, include + sign, display in hex.
>>>
>>> - it's got no stream concept. Every object has to create and manage 
>>> its own buffer, and nobody knows if anyone actually needs it.
>>>
>>> It ought to be at least as simple as:
>>>
>>> struct Foo(A, B, C){
>>> A[10] a;
>>> B b;
>>> C c;
>>> void toString(Sink sink){
>>>    foreach(x; a) sink(x);
>>>    sink(b);
>>>    sink(c);
>>> }
>>> }
>>> ... but it's not, you have to create a silly buffer to put all your 
>>> strings in, even if there are 200 million of them and your giant 
>>> string is just going to be written to a file anyway.
>>>
>>> I'd like to see version(debug) {} put around Object.toString(). It's 
>>> a deathtrap feature that's got no business being used other than for 
>>> debugging.
>>> </rant>
>>
>> First of all, printing stuff "struct.toString()" style is for two things:
>>
>>  o  Debugging
>>  o  Small throwaway code snippets
>>
>> The latter mainly being for two purposes:
>>
>>  o  Testing quick concepts, trying out library functions, etc.
>>  o  For the newbie, when he's learning D, but not output formatting.
>>
>> No "Real Program" uses this, because there you typically do proper 
>> formatting of the output anyway, and almost never print entire structs 
>> or objects as such. Instead, rather the information that they represent.
> 
> How about something like BigInt? Why can't you just print it out?

?? Why couldn't you?

They're not stored as strings (not Janice's anyway), but I don't 
understand the question.

> BTW to everyone, 'Sink' was not a proposal. I was just saying that 
> almost anything's better than the current toString().