Rename std.string.toStringz?

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 26.06.2011 05:21, schrieb Jonathan M Davis:
> On 2011-06-25 20:12, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>> Am 26.06.2011 04:18, schrieb Walter Bright:
>>> On 6/25/2011 6:50 PM, Daniel Gibson wrote:
>>>> In the future the D community may be even larger - much larger
>>>> hopefully. IMHO inconsistent naming in the standard lib makes D look
>>>> unprofessional. If someone take a first look at the languages and it's
>>>> standard lib and it looks like it's just cobbled together it may scare
>>>> him off.
>>>
>>> Perhaps you're right. But breaking his existing, working code will scare
>>> off a lot more people.
>>
>> They're already using D and thus probably already like it too much to be
>> scared off by renaming some functions ;)
>>
>>>> I agree that there shouldn't be breaking changes /all the time/, but I'd
>>>> really like to see *one* big breaking update that fixes all naming
>>>> inconsistencies within Phobos. (Keeping deprecated aliases for the old
>>>> names for some releases should make the transition easier.)
>>>
>>> Breaking existing code has been going on for years now. It needs to stop.
>>
>> Hmm.. it probably should. So let's stop it - *after* bringing Phobos in
>> a (naming-wise) consistent state.
> 
> I generally agree with this, but stability does need to be reached soon.
> 
>> OTOH Phobos isn't done yet anyway (parts will be reaplaced, like
>> std.stream and std.xml and new stuff will be added), so people shouldn't
>> expect it to be stable yet anyway.
> 
> Part of the problem is that it _needs_ to become stable. Parts of it aren't 
> can't be yet, but it needs to reach that point so that people can rely on it 
> being stable. The more mature D is the less we can afford to change things. 

So we need to do it now.

> And we _need_ to reach the where stuff works and doesn't change much, if at 
> all.
> 
> - Jonathan M Davis

I totally agree that Phobos should become stable. Especially stuff that
is to be replaced should be replaced soon.
AFAIK somebody is already working on the std.xml replacement, which is
great.
What remains to be done?
 * std.stream (Unfortunately I don't have any time right now, else I'd
try it myself.)
 * std.socket? I think it's mostly ok, but it could need improvement.
Some has already been done (see
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=5401 - why aren't Chris'
fixes in Phobos yet? I really don't think we need a review process for
that, it mostly fixes annoyances and shouldn't break anything), but some
more (IPv6 and local address AF_UNIX support) needs to be done.

Cheers,
- Daniel