Weird template error

[Jarrett Billingsley]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 8:12 AM, Nick Sabalausky <a at a.a> wrote:
> Another idea, but possibly messy:
> Maybe there could be some automatic behind-the-scenes
> templatization/overloading such that: If there's a function ("bar") that has
> a parameter passed by reference ("x"), and you try to pass "bar" a property
> (of the correct type), then an overloaded version of "bar" is created which
> replaces accesses to x with calls to x's getter/setter.
>
> Ie:
>
> void bar(inout int x)
> {
>    x = x + 2;
> }
>
> void main()
> {
>   int i;
>   auto foo = new Foo();
>   bar(i);
>
>   bar(foo.x);
>   // When the compiler detects the above line,
>   // it generates the following overload of bar:
> }
>
> // Automatically generated by compiler,
> // unless "bar(foo.x);" above is commented out.
> void bar(inout property!(int) x)  // "property!(T)" is either built-in or
> part of the core library
> {
>    x.setter(x.getter() + 2);
> }
>
> Although, I suppose that might still create an excess of extra functions
> when using dynamically-linked libraries (or maybe not, because it would
> probably only be needed on inout params, and I don't think it's common to
> have a large number of those).

It would also make it difficult to have virtual methods with ref
parameters, since the compiler might have to generate 2 ^ (num ref
params) overloads of each such method.