A possible solution for the opIndexXxxAssign morass

[Bill Baxter]

On Tue, Oct 13, 2009 at 10:08 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>
>> Huh? It didn't sound to me like it would get rid of anything, except
>> for the use of the word "index" in many methods that have to do with
>> index operations.  That just seems confusing to me.   I think the
>> opIndexXxxAssign functions may need to be added, but adding them by
>> overloading existing names doesn't seem a win to me.
>>
>> --bb
>
> That's a good point. But something is inherently problematic about name
> explosion (In the proposed solution there is still an explosion in the count
> of functions that need to be written.)
>
> Now I realize there's also a need for opSliceXxxAssign, bleh. Unless we
> ascribe a distinct type to a .. b.

Yeh, the name explosion is just a symptom of the real problem, which
is function count explosion.  That's what needs fixing, if anything.
But I don't really think having a lot of functions is the issue, it's
implementers having to *write* a lot of boring repetitive functions
that is the problem.  So if the drudgery can be automated somehow (in
the cases where the pattern is regular), then that would solve the
problem in my mind.  Even if it was still a function explosion under
the hood.

--bb