Overloading/Inheritance issue

[Regan Heath]

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Wed, 01 Aug 2007 17:37:58 -0400, Steve Schveighoffer wrote:
>> This is very counterintuitive...
> 
>> My point basically is why should a coder be forced to declare
>> an alias when realistically there is no reason they would
>> NOT want to declare the alias?
> 
> Oh don't get me wrong, I too think that the current rules are totally daft.
> I mean, why does one go to the trouble of deriving one class from another
> if its not to take advantage of members in the parent class?
> 
> I vaguely recall Walter saying that he decided to do it this way because it
> is easy to implement this rule into the compiler and it makes the compiler
> run faster. (I am paraphrasing from memory, so I could be totally wrong).
> 
> If this is so, then it strikes me that the language is this way in order to
> make life easier for compiler writers than for D coders, which is just not
> right in my POV.

You're not recalling Walter reasoning correctly. :)

The reason it is done the way it is, the reason Walter gave, is that 
this is the same behaviour C++ has.  He also explained why C++ has that 
behaviour, I've linked his original arguments at the end of this post.

#include <stdio.h>

class Base
{
public:
	void foo()
	{
		printf("Base::foo()\n");
	}

	void foo(int i)
	{
		printf("Base::foo(i)\n");
	}
};

class Child : Base
{
public:
	void foo(int i)
	{
		printf("Child::foo(i)\n");
	}
};

void main()
{
	Child c;
	c.foo();
}

Some references to Walters original comments on the topic.  Anyone who 
is interested should probably read this entire thread (though it is a 
monster) to get a really clear picture of the problems associated with this:

http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=6975
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=7053
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=7063
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=7137
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=7149
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=7057
http://www.digitalmars.com/webnews/newsgroups.php?art_group=digitalmars.D&article_id=7072

I could keep linking all day... these are all from the same thread so 
starting at the top and reading the whole thread should give you a fair 
idea of the issues.

Regan