Idiomatic way to call base method in generic code

[ZombineDev via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Monday, 25 May 2015 at 07:57:49 UTC, ketmar wrote:
> i don't know why you want that, but something like this may do:
>
> auto callBaseMethod(string MTN, C, Args...) (inout C self, Args 
> args) {
>   alias FSC = BaseClassesTuple!(C)[0];
>   return mixin(`self.`~FSC.stringof~`.`~MTN~"(args)");
> }
>
> writeln(d.callBaseMethod!"toString");
>

Thanks!

[1]: 
https://github.com/ZombineDev/Chess2RT/blob/c36ba3e73744cf3912c25abccedbbd742f7f5be3/source/util/prettyprint.d#L7

[2]: 
https://github.com/ZombineDev/Chess2RT/blob/master/source/util/prettyprint.d#L14

I initially had [1] a string mixin which goes through all the 
members of a class and prints them and also prints its base 
class' members, but then it seemed that it would be more cleaner 
if I could use a function template [2] (which also improved my 
debug experience) so I started exploring alias, but they turned 
out to be less powerful then I thought:

alias can't refer to a nested member:
-------------
struct Point2
{
     float x;
     float y;
}

struct Line2
{
     Point2 start;
     Point2 end;

     mixin Access;

     // alias x1 = this.start.x; <- this doesn't work :(

     alias x1 = get!"start.x";
     alias y1 = get!"start.y";
     alias x2 = get!"end.x";
     alias y2 = get!"end.y";
}

// I need to use a mixin to flatten the access :(
private mixin template Access()
{
     ref auto get(string accessPattern)() inout
     {
         return mixin(accessPattern);
     }
}
-------------

So I wondered if I'm missing something and decided to ask here.

> no. and again, why do you want that? why do you people are so 
> afraid of
> string mixins? ;-)

Well I'm not afraid of string mixins, but the `alias` keyword 
seemed to possess some mysterious power (I was also under the 
influence of this [3] blog post) which I wanted to explore. Also 
they're a bit more elegant.

[3]: 
http://blog.thecybershadow.net/2015/04/28/the-amazing-template-that-does-nothing/