Uniform call syntax for implicit this.

[Robert Jacques]

On Thu, 03 Feb 2011 13:42:30 -0500, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>  
wrote:

> On Thursday, February 03, 2011 09:54:44 Michel Fortin wrote:
>> On 2011-02-03 12:43:12 -0500, Daniel Gibson <metalcaedes at gmail.com>  
>> said:
>> > Am 03.02.2011 15:57, schrieb Michel Fortin:
>> >> On 2011-02-02 23:48:15 -0500, %u <dflgkd at sgjds.com> said:
>> >>> When implemented, will uniform call syntax work for the "this"
>> >>> object even if not specified?
>> >>>
>> >>> For example, will foo() get called in the following example?
>> >>>
>> >>> void foo(A a, int b) {}
>> >>>
>> >>> class A {
>> >>> void test() {
>> >>> this.foo(10);
>> >>> foo(10);
>> >>> }
>> >>> }
>> >>
>> >> I think it should work.
>> >
>> > I think foo(10) should *not* be equivalent to foo(this, 10).
>>
>> Personally, I'm not sure whether the uniform call syntax will be this
>> much useful or not, but if it gets implemented I think foo(10) should
>> be equivalent to foo(this, 10) in the case above. That said, it should
>> not be ambiguous: if there is a member function foo and a global
>> function foo and both matches the call, it's ambiguous and it should be
>> an error.
>>
>> Can this work in practice? We probably won't know until we have an
>> implementation to play with.
>
> Except that if you have both a member function foo and a free function  
> foo, how
> can you tell the compiler which to use?

*sigh* The same way you do it today, but using the outer-scope operator  
'.'. So foo(10) would call the member function, while .foo(10) would call  
the outer function, which would be re-written as .foo(this,10).

An example of this today in D:
import std.conv;
class Foo {
     string text;
     string toString() {return .text("My text is: "text);}
}