dmd 1.046 and 2.031 releases

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Ary Borenszweig wrote:
>>> のしいか (noshiika) escribió:
>>>> Thank you for the great work, Walter and all the other contributors.
>>>>
>>>> But I am a bit disappointed with the CaseRangeStatement syntax.
>>>> Why is it
>>>>    case 0: .. case 9:
>>>> instead of
>>>>    case 0 .. 9:
>>>>
>>>> With the latter notation, ranges can be easily used together with 
>>>> commas, for example:
>>>>    case 0, 2 .. 4, 6 .. 9:
>>>>
>>>> And CaseRangeStatement, being inconsistent with other syntaxes using 
>>>> the .. operator, i.e. slicing and ForeachRangeStatement, includes 
>>>> the endpoint.
>>>> Shouldn't D make use of another operator to express ranges that 
>>>> include the endpoints as Ruby or Perl6 does?
>>>
>>> I agree.
>>>
>>> I think this syntax is yet another one of those things people looking 
>>> at D will say "ugly" and turn their heads away.
>>
>> And what did those people use when they wanted to express a range of 
>> case labels? In other words, where did those people turn their heads 
>> towards?
> 
> They probably used an if.

So they used an inferior means to start with.

> But I think it's not about that. If D didn't have the possibility to 
> define case range statements, it would be better. Now there's a 
> possibility to do that, but with an ugly syntax (you'll find out when 
> this newsgroup will receive about one or two complaints about this each 
> month, not to mention there were already a lot of complaints).

This is speculation. And the complaints usually were accompanied with 
inferior suggestions for "improving" things. Everyone wanted to add some 
incomprehensible, inconsistent, or confusing syntax to do ranged cases, 
as long as it wasn't the one I'd chosen.

> You can 
> find other "ugly" things by looking at repetitive mails to this newsgroup.

I and others don't find the added syntax ugly in the least.

> Also, there's a limitation of just 256 cases. What's that? Where that 
> limitation come from? That looks week.

That's just an implementation limitation that future versions will 
eliminate.


Andrei