Overloading/Inheritance issue

[Bruno Medeiros]

Walter Bright wrote:
>> (The closest I recall is "refactoring" C++ code, but that's something 
>> where the CLI won't help you either)
> 
> Sure it does, the CLI has very powerful text processing tools available 
> to it.

Maybe for rename refactoring. Most other refactoring operations need an 
actual semantic tool, you can't do it with CLI text processing tools.
But that is a moot point: when you do such rename refactoring, most of 
the times the IDE built-in search-replace facilities are just as good as 
using the CLI, if not better. For example in Visual Studio C++ I find it 
more convenient to do search replace in the IDE, since it already knows 
which C++ files belong to the project and which don't.
That's not saying there aren't cases where using the CLI is better, but 
in those cases (which should not be common), one can just fire up a 
shell, do it, and go back to the IDE.

Walter Bright wrote:
 > Bruno Medeiros wrote:
 >> But again this was a shell-specific point. When programming, I don't
 >> recall ever *having the need* to do a series of repeated actions in an
 >> IDE. Perhaps you can give an example?
 >
 > Here are some:
 >
 > .. global file renaming
 > .. running automated test suites
 > .. interfile search/replace across a subset of the project files
 > .. copying a subset of the project files into another directory
 > .. running the debugger with the same complex set of commands, over and
 > over
 >

Some of those actions are simple to perform (like running automated test 
suites, or running the debugger with the same complex set of commands) : 
they should consist simply of a command invocation, whether in a GUI, or 
in an CLI shell.
The others may indeed be repetitive to perform, but the same argument as 
above holds: if they are easier to do in the CLI (which should be an 
uncommon case, if the IDE is good), then fire up the CLI, do it, and go 
back to the IDE.


An interesting and ironic side story:
When I diff the docs of DMD releases, I have some regexps that clear out 
some common but unsignificant changes. However, because these are 
multi-line regexps, I have to load up my text editor (EmEditor) and use 
the search/replace feature of the editor, because GNU's sed -e, or any 
other standard GNU tool that I know of, does not support multi-line 
regexps. At least as far as I could find, If I am wrong and anyone know 
sa way, let me know, so that I can put it in a script. :)

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D