removal of cruft from D

[Justin Johansson]

Bill Baxter wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:37 PM, Justin Johansson <no at spam.com> wrote:
>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>> On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 3:10 PM, Lars T. Kyllingstad
>>> <public at kyllingen.nospamnet> wrote:
>>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>>> "Yigal Chripun" <yigal100 at gmail.com> wrote in message
>>>>> news:he6sqe$1dqu$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>>> Based on recent discussions on the NG a few features were
>>>>>> deprecated/removed from D, such as typedef and C style struct
>>>>>> initializers.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> IMO this cleanup and polish is important and all successful languages
>>>>>> do
>>>>>> such cleanup for major releases (Python and Ruby come to mind). I'm
>>>>>> glad to
>>>>>> see that D follows in those footsteps instead of accumulating craft
>>>>>> like C++
>>>>>> does.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> As part of this trend of cleaning up D before the release of D2, what
>>>>>> other features/craft should be removed/deprecated?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I suggest reverse_foreach and c style function pointers
>>>>>>
>>>>>> please add your candidates for removal.
>>>>>>
>>>>> s/reverse_foreach/foreach_reverse/ ;)
>>>>>
>>>>> 1. Floating point literals without digits on *both* sides!!! "1.", ".1"
>>>>> --> Useless hindrance to future language expansion!
>>>>>
>>>>> 2. Octal literals! I think it'd be great to have a new octal syntax, or
>>>>> even better, a general any-positive-inter-base syntax. But until that
>>>>> finally happens, I don't want "010 == 8" preserved. And I don't think
>>>>> the
>>>>> ability to have an octal literal is important enough that lacking it for
>>>>> a
>>>>> while is a problem. And if porting-from-C really has to be an issue,
>>>>> then
>>>>> just make 0[0-9_]+ an error for a transitionary period (or forever -
>>>>> it'd at
>>>>> least be better than maintaining "010 == 8").
>>>> It would definitely be a problem if octal literals disappeared from the
>>>> language, even if only for a short while. They are pretty much the only
>>>> sensible way to specify POSIX file permissions.
>>>>
>>>>  import core.sys.posix.sys.stat;
>>>>  ...
>>>>  chmod("path/to/file", 0755);
>>> Well you can always do..
>>>
>>> chmod("path/to/file", octal(755));
>>>
>>> --bb
>> octal(755)?
>>
>> What's the base-10 identity of that?
>>
>> decimal(493) or decimal(755)?
>>
>> base-16 etc.
> 
> Fine.  Make it octal!"755" if you prefer.
> The point is just that you can write a function that will convert a
> number to octal for the rare cases when you need it.
> You don't absolutely need octal literals.
> 
> --bb

Thanks for clarifying your position;
I can happily go along with that. :-)
(Sorry if at all I sounded obtuse or curt).
--Justin