std.metastrings

[Don]

Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 22:17:21 +0200, Bill Baxter <wbaxter at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> My plan is to try to do things with an API that reflects std.string as
>> closely as possible, and then as CTFE gets better, just replace those
>> functions with aliases to the ones in std.string.  So eventually
>> std.metastrings should contain little more than a bunch of aliases.
>> But in the mean time there'll be a one-stop shop for basic
>> compile-time string manipulation functions.
> 
> Why don't we have version(CTFE) or something like that yet? Then we can 
> just have two versions of code for most of std.string - one optimized 
> for runtime execution, and one adhering to CTFE restrictions. That would 
> remove the need to write two versions of a function which would be 
> called both during compile-time and runtime (one using std.metastrings 
> and one using std.string).

Yes, I think it's something we need. I've worked out how to do it, but 
haven't implemented it yet. There's way too much to do...

It would fit very nicely into the 'meta' proposal. EG
if (meta.ctfe) { ... } else { ... }