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[Ary Borenszweig]

Charles Hixson escribió:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Michel Fortin wrote:
>>> On 2009-03-06 14:35:59 -0500, Walter Bright 
>>> <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> said:
>>>
>>>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>> "Can't live without bitfields! Give me bitfields and I'll lift the 
>>>>> Earth!"
>>>>>
>>>>> "Here they are, std.bitmanip. Well-defined and more portable and 
>>>>> flexible than C's."
>>>>>
>>>>> "Meh, don't like the definition syntax."
>>>>
>>>> Classic.
>>>
>>> Well, he certainly has a point. Compare this:
>>>
>>>     mixin(bitfields!(
>>>         uint, "x",    2,
>>>         int,  "y",    3,
>>>         uint, "z",    2,
>>>         bool, "flag", 1));
>>>
>>> With this:
>>>
>>>     uint x : 2;
>>>     int  y : 3;
>>>     uint z : 2;
>>>     bool flag : 1;
>>>
>>> The second is certainly prettier and more readable.
>>
>> (Just to clarify: to me the humor of the situation was that someone 
>> who considered bitfields an absolute prerequisite for language 
>> adoption subsequently found the syntax excuse to bail out. Essentially 
>> the hypothetical user was fabricating one pretext after another to 
>> rationalize their pre-made decision to not try D -- an absolute 
>> classic attitude when it comes about acquiring new programming 
>> languages.)
>>
>> About the syntax itself - definitions are few and uses are many. In 
>> addition the D solution:
>>
>> (a) guarantees data layout;
>>
>> (b) offers symbolic limits, e.g. x_max and x_min are automatically 
>> added as enums;
>>
>> (c) checks for overflow, which is essential for small bitfields;
>>
>> (d) offers a way to manipulate the fields wholesale by using the 
>> concatenation of all their names, e.g. xyzflag;
>>
>> (e) suggests that there are other cool things that can be done within 
>> the language, not by adding features to it.
>>
>> Hopefully that makes up for the more loaded syntax.
>>
>>> Does it matter much? Not to me; I rarely use bit fields. If I were 
>>> using them a lot, perhaps I'd be more concerned.
>>
>> I am using them here and there - even in Phobos - and they work very 
>> well.
>>
>>> While I don't care very much about bitfields, that 
>>> "mixin(tmpl!(...))" syntax is awful. "mixin tmpl!(...)" is better, 
>>> but has too many limitations, and it isn't always clear for the user 
>>> which one should be used. Couldn't D2 get a better syntax for mixins?
>>
>> I agree it should.
>>
>>
>> Andrei
> I'm glad that they're there.  And I'm glad that they work.  But I really 
> hate the syntax, and am glad I've never needed to use them.  MUCH better 
> would have been:
> mixin(bitfields!("
>      uint, x,    2,
>      int,  y,    3,
>      uint, z,    2,
>      bool, flag, 1
>      ")
> 
> even better would have been:
> mixin(bitfields!("
>      uint x :  2,
>      int  y :  3,
>      uint z :  2,
>      bool flag : 1
>      ")

Why do the parsing yourself if you can leave that to the compiler? Just 
read the docs, pass the arguments and that's it. Way much easier. You 
get standard error messages, if you use an IDE you get autocompletion 
for the parameters, etc.

I really don't know why everyone is so obsessed with strings... :-P