deprecated delete and manual memory management

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 28.04.2011 10:28, schrieb Jacob Carlborg:
> On 2011-04-27 22:28, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>> Am 27.04.2011 22:13, schrieb so:
>>>> One thing that is perhaps obvious, but eludes me; when dropping the
>>>> delete-operator, are there any obvious reason to not also drop the
>>>> "new" keyword? ("new" is a fairly good method/variable name, if
>>>> nothing else)
>>>>
>>>> I could see two possible alternatives:
>>>>
>>>> Global (and defined-by-default) template new!(Type): (as suggested
>>>> elsewhere in this thread by so)
>>>> This is very close to the current situation, but makes it possible
>>>> to use as a method-name, and clearly states there's nothing "magic"
>>>> about it.
>>>>
>>>> Explicit Allocator, such as GC.new!(Type).
>>>> Would have the benefit of clearly showing who did the allocation,
>>>> and would map nicely to other allocators. (Malloc.new/free!(T)!(T)).
>>>>
>>>> It would also allow library-methods that might allocate instances,
>>>> take an allocator as an optional template argument. I.E.
>>>> auto obj = dict.createObject("key");
>>>> OR
>>>> auto obj = dict.createObject!(Malloc)("key");
>>>> scope(exit) Malloc.free(obj);
>>>>
>>>> Possibly an obvious bad idea, but I haven't seen it discussed?
>>>>
>>>> Regards
>>>> / Ulrik
>>>
>>> With the deprecated "delete", custom allocators and such i don't see
>>> much of a reason other than saving an "!" (actually we don't save a char
>>> here, " " also a char :) ), and "()" if you are calling the default
>>> constructor. I don't consider these points negative, quite contrary, you
>>> just got rid of an arcane syntax.
>>>
>>> It is understandable for C++ has it. If nothing else, the lack of many
>>> basic features (maybe the reason of this syntax).
>>>
>>> Rather then removing all together, i would drop them from language and
>>> go for a library solution, if there is an obvious blocker, i also fail
>>> to see it :)
>>
>> It'd create template bloat and uglier syntax (expecially confusing for
>> people coming from about any other popular OO language) for a really
>> common, standard feature.
>> These drawbacks are acceptable for custom allocation and other stuff the
>> average user shouldn't care about, but not for an elemental feature like
>> "new".
>>
>> Cheers,
>> - Daniel
>
> Ruby uses "ClassName.new" to create a new instance and Objective-C uses
> "[[ClassName alloc] init]". Not all languages use "new ClassName".
>

Ok. And probably Python doesn't as well.
However D has this C/C++/Java/C# like syntax (Objective-C probably has 
that as well, but anyway), i.e. curly braces for blocks, C-like syntax 
for functions, try {..} catch(Foo f) {..} (yeah I know C doesn't have 
that, but no alternative different syntax either), ... so IMHO it makes 
sense for D to have the same syntax as the majority of these languages 
for the same feature (if that syntax doesn't have big enough drawbacks 
like <> for templates).

Cheers,
- Daniel