property syntax strawman

[Michel Fortin]

On 2009-08-02 03:43:43 -0400, Walter Bright <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> said:

> The alternative is to have a unique syntax for properties. Ideally, the 
> syntax should be intuitive and mimic its use. After much fiddling, and 
> based on n.g. suggestions, Andrei and I penciled in:
> 
>    bool empty { ... }
>    void empty=(bool b) { ... }

Looking at it more carefully, this looks like an invitation to omit 
parenthesis for functions with no argument. I mean, look at this and 
tell me what it is?

	T transform { ... }

Is this a transform property (returning and affine transform) or an 
action function returning transform? I'd guess it's a property since it 
has no parenthesis, but nothing makes this very clear.

And could you do this? Would Andrei be tempted by this?

	void popFront { ... }

Note that I'm brigning this as an observation. Style guidelines can be 
written mandating parenthesis for actions functions, which means my 
problem of writing a coherent naming guideline is solved. But who read 
the style guidelines?

While I like this syntax, the "getProperty()"/"setProperty()" syntax 
(and also the "property" keyword syntax) has one advantage over this 
one: it forces the interface to explicitly say "this is a 
getter/setter" or "this is a property", which I expect would reduce 
abuses. It's the same difference between as "opAdd" vs. "op+".

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/