Proposal for custom time string formatting in std.datetime

[Michel Fortin]

On 2011-12-22 17:22:59 +0000, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> said:

> On 2011-12-22 16:56, Michel Fortin wrote:
>> The benefit of referencing classes within module info: you can
>> instantiate them using Object.factory, if they have a default
>> constructor. We pay a heavy price compared to what we get with this very
>> limited runtime reflection.
> 
> It's a really nice feature to have when implementing serialization.

True, for serialization and other things. I'm not arguing against the feature.

What I am observing is that the the capabilities of D's runtime 
reflection are quite small compared to the footprint it has. We often 
hear on this list about how adding more information about functions and 
fields to typeinfo would bloat executables, yet I am under the 
impression the biggest part of that bloat (the code of all the virtual 
functions and whatever they call, even if you don't use those functions 
or even the class) is already part of each and every D executable, only 
we don't realize this because it is not exposed in the API, it just 
sits there in a mostly non-interpretable form (the vtable).

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/