sorting hidden data.

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 9/29/10 13:10 PDT, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
> Would that be the uniform function call syntax that I've been waiting
> for since I first heard of it?

Yah. One unpleasant issue I found with it (as it's already implemented 
for arrays) is a chicken-and-egg thing: say I want to provide operation 
moveFront only if the type doesn't define it yet. Without UCF (Uniform 
Call Syntax) things are simple:

auto moveFront(R)(ref R r)
if (!is(typeof(r.moveFront())) && !hasElaborateCopy!(ElementType!R)) {
     return r.front;
}

With UCF things get messy because introducing moveFront at global level 
does make r.moveFront() legit, so the if clause returns true, which is 
weird because the function shouldn't have been introduced yet. So the 
compiler gets confused by this lying Cretan riddle - it recurses forever 
(when R is an array).

The solution would be probably to not consider the symbol introduced 
until the if-clause has cleared.


Andrei