How about Go's &Struct instead of new? addendum

[Justin Johansson]

Justin Johansson Wrote:
> Currently in my D projects I use static opCall to eliminate "new" (at least for
> classes) such as:
> 
> class Foo
> {
>   int x;
>   Foo( int x) { this.x = x; }
>   static Foo opCall( int x) { return new Foo( x); }
> }
> 
> I'm not sure if this considered good D style of not (please advise), but it does
> eliminate having to type new all the time to allocate and construct new Foo's.
> 
> However, for consistency, I find myself often typing in static opCall boiler-plate code 
> when creating a new class definition even for classes which few instances are
> ever created in the wild.  In some cases, then, more overall keystrokes are
> incurred just to save the infrequent new keyword when instantiating the class.
> 
> Analysing the break-even point (minimum number of new's to save) for the
> static opCall keystroke overhead is (at least in this case) .. hmm .. let's see ...
> 
> "new" is 3 characters but at least one whitespace separator is needed so that
> makes 4 characters "new ".
> 
> Now the following comparison text (edited in fixed-width font, 1st line is 50 chars; 2nd is 48):
> 
> static Foo opCall( int x) { return new Foo( x); }
> new new new new new new new new new new new new
> 
> Whilst I like the idea of getting rid of new keyword, I must admit that on the
> balance I generally don't save any keystrokes using the static opCall instrument.
> 
> btw.  My thinking for getting rid of new keyword came from some experience
> with Scala case classes and companion classes (Object in Scala parlance).
> From what I understand/remember, "Object" is Scala's way of getting rid of "static" in
> relation to class member variables and methods.  In some ways, D opCall some analogy
> with these Scala idioms.
> 
> What do others think?
> 

I neglected to say also that my usage of static opCall for classes is mostly in relation
to immutable "value classes".  If there's already a precomputed instance of the same
class with the same constructor parameters my static opCall returns the precomputed
instance and not a new instance.  *In this case*, it's not a matter of saving keystrokes
but a reflection of my design so I guess that makes my usage of static opCall more
of a necessity.

Justin