struct encapsulation

[Knud Soerensen]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 21:18:05 -0500, alex wrote:

> This code compiles - I don't think it should.
> If b is a private member of A then why can I change it outside the class ?
> 
> struct A
> {
> private:
> 	int b;
> };
> 
> 
> int main()
> {
> 	A a;
> 	a.b = 10;
> 
> 	return 0;
> }

I see that you have solved your problem, but I have some thought on struct
encapsulation.

Imagine a struct like:

struct angle
{
float degrees;
}
Now imagine we write a lot of code using angle:

 angle a1;
 a1.degrees= 60.0;
 ... 
 writefln(a1.degrees);


and then we need to refactor angle to use radians

We change angle to 
class angle
{
float radians;
public:
float degrees(); // get degrees
void degrees(float); //set degrees
}

But now we have to go trough all the code and change it to.

angle a1;
 a1.degrees(60.0);
 ... 
 writefln(a1.degrees());


What I think could be very useful is for D to automatic
accept bar() and bar(type) as getter and setter for elements in structs and classes like.

struct foo
{
type bar; 
}

I know that we might like to keep the old way for backwards compatibility
with c/c++ and D 1.0, but at last it will allow further generations to
write maintainable code.