[Issue 4477] New: JSON output for function definitions includes insufficient type information

[d-bugmail at puremagic.com]

http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4477

           Summary: JSON output for function definitions includes
                    insufficient type information
           Product: D
           Version: D1 & D2
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: All
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: DMD
        AssignedTo: nobody at puremagic.com
        ReportedBy: dhasenan at gmail.com


--- Comment #0 from Chris Wright <dhasenan at gmail.com> 2010-07-17 09:35:15 PDT ---
Consider:
---
class A {}
void foo(A a) {}
void bar(ref A a) {}
void frob(A a = null) {}
---

dmd -X on this outputs the following type information for functions foo, bar,
and frob:
"type": "void(A a)" // foo
"type": "void(ref A a)" // bar
"type": "void(A a = cast(A)null)" // frob

There are a few issues with this:
 - To determine what the arguments are, I need to parse a string. This is
undesirable. (Additionally, I can't parse it with regular expressions, since a
function might take a delegate or templated type as a parameter.)
 - Even if I go through the trouble of parsing the string, I *still* only have
the type name. Not even the fully qualified name. So I have no idea where to
locate the type definition.
 - The names of function parameters are included, making it harder to find the
types.
 - Default parameters are also included here.

Suggested solution: change "type" property to an object. For user-defined
types, include at a minimum the fully qualified name, as given by
demangle(T.mangleof). For function types, include an array of parameter
objects, each of which can include a name, a type, a storage class, and a
default value.

{
"name": "frob",
"type": {
"return-value:" "void",
"parameters": [
{
"name": "a",
"type": "test.A",
"storage-class": "in",
"default-value": "cast(test.A)null"
}
]

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