Herb Sutter briefly discusses D during interview

[Ali Çehreli]

On 06/07/2011 06:30 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
 > On 2011-06-07 17:53, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
 >> I'm not sure what he means when he says that D doesn't simplify syntax.
 >
 > He talked just before that about simplifying declaration syntax so 
that it
 > reads left-to-right instead of right-to-left, and D didn't do that.

I don't think D could use right-to-left. Like this?:

a int;
p *int;

That would be too strange for its heritage.

 > For
 > instance,
 >
 > int[4][3] a;
 >
 > declares a static array of length three where each element of that 
array is a
 > static array of length 4 where each of those arrays holds an integer. 
It's
 > read right-to-left

Note that D's syntax fixes the horribly broken one of C. And contrary to 
popular belief, only some of C's syntax is right-to-left; notably, 
pointers to arrays and pointers to functions are outside-to-inside.

I never read declarations from right to left. I doubt that anybody does 
that. "Code is not Literature". (I stole the title of tomorrow's Silicon 
Valley  ACCU talk: 
http://accu.org/index.php/accu_branches/accu_usa/upcoming) Reading 
declarations from right-to-left is cute but there is no value in doing 
so. Besides, there are no "array of"s in that declaration at all. It is 
a coincidence that the C syntax can be read that way with the added "is 
a"s and "of"s.

In D, type is on the left and the variable name is on the right:

int i;
int[4] array;
int[4][3] array_of_array;

That is consistent.

 > and throws people off at least some of the time.

It must have thrown only the people who could bend their minds to 
somehow accept C's array syntax.

 > Because,
 > when you go to index it, it's used left-to-right

What is left-to-right? Indexing does one thing: it provides access to 
the element with the given number. There is no left nor right in array 
indexing.

 >
 > auto a = i[3]; //out-of-bounds

i[3] accesses the element number 3 of i (yes, with the indicated bug). 
There is nothing else. The type of that element is int[4] as it has been 
declared. This has nothing to do with left and right.

 > D stayed closer to C and C++
 > and kept the right-to-left declaration synax. That's what he was 
referring to.

I agree. I can't understand how D's array syntax is not seen as fixing 
C's broken one.

Ali