Fun with allMembers

[Georg Wrede]

Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Shin Fujishiro wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I've had fun with the allMembers traits over the past few days and found
>> it more powerful than I thought.
>>
>> __traits(allMembers, T) returns the member names of T. As some might
>> already know, T is not restricted to a class or struct; it can also be
>> an enum, template, or even module. Try this:
>> --------------------
>> enum E { a, b, c }
>> template T() { int x, y, z; }
>> import std.stdio;
>> pragma(msg, __traits(allMembers, E).stringof);
>> pragma(msg, __traits(allMembers, T).stringof);
>> pragma(msg, __traits(allMembers, std.stdio).stringof);
>> --------------------
>> You'll like the result :). It must be usable!
>>
>> For example, using allMembers with enums, I could implement
>> enumToString and enumFromString without defineEnum.
>> Code: http://codepad.org/HVvPjoI7
>>
>> So, what other uses could there be?
> 
> Wow, I didn't know about this! It might as well be everything needed for 
> a full-blown compile-time reflection package!
> 
> To answer your question: for starters, try to implement BlackHole and 
> WhiteHole as explained here:
> 
> http://erdani.dreamhosters.com/cranking-policies-up.pdf

First of all, congratulations for conjuring up a cool (and 
marketing-savvy name) for a concept!!!

Suppose I decide to use BlackHole as a base class. Would that mean that 
I create the base class like

class RichardNixon createBlackHoleClass!()

class DerivedRN : RichardNixon {
     /* something declared here, makes no difference in this example */
     int foo(int ip) {/* whatever */}
}

and then, I'd expect it to work like

void main() {
     DerivedRN drn = new DerivedRN;
     float ivar, jvar;
     jvar = drn.bar(ivar);  // note: bar, not foo
}

and it'd work like RichardNixon were actually defined as

class RichardNixon {
     float bar(float jv) { return float 0; } // or whatever
}