Deducing a template retrun parameter type based on an assignment?

[Vlad Levenfeld via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Friday, 30 January 2015 at 07:13:09 UTC, Jeremy DeHaan wrote:
> That seems strange. I figured that it would be smart enough to
> deduce the parameter type based on the type that it was trying 
> to
> be assigned to.

It seems sensible to me, as changing string to auto would leave 
the type of the expression undefined. But maybe your expectation 
is a reasonable enhancement, I'll leave it for someone more 
knowledgeable than myself to judge.

> That is good to hear. It seemed like that was the way it would
> work, but I've never had to specify a default template parameter
> type. I'm hoping to avoid having to specify a template 
> parameter,
> but it seems like it can't be helped if users want to get their
> string type as a wstring or dstring though.

It doesn't seem too bad to me. I used a similar pattern quite 
recently to wrap glGetIntegeriv into gl.get!int. One way or 
another you'll have to specify the type, but if you want to cut 
down on redundant code then

auto ret = thing.getString!wchar;

is a good bet. And I'm fairly certain that since you're using a 
default param of char,

auto ret = thing.getString;

should compile and result in ret being a char string.