auto storage class - infer or RAII?

[Walter Bright]

Lionello Lunesu wrote:
>> (a) Get rid of 'auto'.
> I completely agree. The current "auto" can then be tagged as deprecated and 
> removed Jan 1st!
> 
>> (b) Create a new keyword that is more obviously read as 'type inference'.
> I like "var".

My problem with "var" is the history of the keyword. Back in the olden 
days, there were two main camps of programmers - the Pascal people, and 
the C people. Each camp looked with disdain upon the other as "not 
getting it". The Pascal crowd progressed to Modula 2, Object Pascal, and 
eventually Delphi. The C family progressed to C++, Java, and D. There 
didn't seem to be much voluntary mixing up, people would switch camps 
only under duress.

So I have a real (possibly outdated) concern that "var" appearing in D 
will make the language distasteful to the C crowd. The appearance of a 
language matters a lot, it's like the clothes one wears that identifies 
one (consciously or not) as being with a particular group.

And that's why I've avoided using "var".

("let" is far worse, as it gives the impression that D is some sort of 
new Basic language.)


>> (c) Create a new keyword that is more obviously read as 'resource
>> destruction at end of scope'.
> I like "scope"
> 
> L. 
> 
>