What does ! mean?

[Ali Çehreli]

On 09/27/2017 08:33 AM, Ky-Anh Huynh wrote:
 > On Wednesday, 27 September 2017 at 14:34:06 UTC, Eugene Wissner wrote:
 >>
 >> See also the following chapter in Ali's book:
 >> http://ddili.org/ders/d.en/templates.html
 >
 > Thanks a lot. I will keep reading :)

The fact that such an important operator is explained so late in the 
book is due to the book's strong desire to have a linear flow.

Although binary ! appears before the templates chapter as to!int, 
format!"%s", etc., I decided to get to templates only after going 
through everything that could be templatized. (For example, even 
interfaces can be templates.) I don't claim this is the best choice but 
I'm happy that some people said that they found the linear flow useful. 
(I know that others would find it boring. :) )

If I were to write the book again, one other thing that I would explain 
earlier would be UFCS, and I would use much more of it in the examples. 
(UFCS was added to the language after I wrote most of the book.)

Ali