property syntax strawman

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 03 Aug 2009 10:25:02 -0400, Michiel Helvensteijn  
<m.helvensteijn.remove at gmail.com> wrote:

> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>
>> So the poster who started this trail of the thread is assuming that
>>
>> t.property.get()
>>
>> identifies the property getter directly.  But what if the return type of
>> t.property.get() contains a method get()?  Since t.property is an alis  
>> for
>> t.property.get(), Should t.property.get() map to:
>>
>> ...
>>
>> That is the ambiguity.
>
> I myself see great value in the ability to access the getter and setter
> functions directly. But because of the ambiguity you described, this is
> problematic for D.
>
> Andrei sees 'get' and 'set' as nothing more than declaration-side
> indications of the getter and setter. Not real functions. In that case,  
> the
> ambiguity doesn't exist.
>
> To alleviate possible confusion, it has been suggested that a space be  
> used,
> not a dot, between the name of the property and get/set in the  
> declaration.
>

So your answer is, there is no ambiguity because it's not possible to  
access the getter/setter directly?  That poses a problem for existing code  
which uses delegates to such functions.  I'm not sure we want to lose that  
ability.

-Steve