What library functionality would you most like to see in D?

[Marco Leise]

Am 01.08.2011, 05:31 Uhr, schrieb Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>:

> We need to have all of the dmd and Phobos developers in triplicate. Then  
> maybe we could actually get everything done that we'd like to get done...

 From reading what some C++ folks think is 'forced' on them in D (making  
common things easy vs a low level structure covering all exotic use cases)  
and my experience with the RedBlackTree (it is fast but, couldn't be  
created empty as I am used to from other language libraries) I think it is  
not just about getting things done, but about brainstorming in advance.
When we use containers, what use cases do we have? Programmer A wants to  
be able to easily switch the container implementation from an array list  
to a sorted tree, B requires pure speed without the overhead of virtual  
functions and a class hierarchy. Either A or B give in, there is room for  
both in Phobos or either A or B go and (re)write the containers. I believe  
this discussion has been here already, but I wasn't reading the list at  
that time. :)
So what I want to say is, before someone starts writing the code for a  
parser generator, try to make a list of use cases. I don't say every use  
case must be covered, but it would be great, if there were 'entry points'  
for others to implement what they need. A common example is a sorted set  
that sorts by the natural ordering of elements, but can be augmented with  
a comparator function. So far we have the
- general idea of a lexer/parser
- a D source code parser
I'd be very exited to see a CTFE solution to building a parser *g*, you  
know just for the awe of it. If that works out and it turns out that it is  
actually quite fast it *could* be used to write a D parser from  
definitions. But the point that you would want to keep close to the C  
source of DMD is strong.
I wanted to write a disk cleanup tool for Linux that uses a simple special  
script language basically using list operations (like list all java  
processes -> list all files in directory x containing any processes pid ->  
protect them from deletion). The format consists keywords that can open  
new blocks that again contain other keywords, so I ended up writing parse  
functions for each block type. I'd go with a complete AST here instead of  
the linear list of tokens that has been proposed. If I wrote a syntax  
highlighter then the AST would not be of much use. So this could be two  
use cases to cover. Comments?