typeof()

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 12:26:29 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:

> On 2011-10-20 16:20, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 10:07:12 -0400, Gor Gyolchanyan
>> <gor.f.gyolchanyan at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>> D's runtime type info is very limited, so you may not be able to get
>>>> what you are looking for.
>>>
>>> D's compile-time type info is very rich and it's easy to remember it
>>> for run-time use.
>>
>> Yes, but you have to do some funky stuff to link it to the typeinfo.
>> Compare this to other languages where the compiler generates a very rich
>> set of runtime info (e.g. Java).
>>
>> I think actually, the runtime info generated by the compiler is seldom
>> used (except for maybe dynamic casting), and just creates bloat.
>>
>> I envision in the future, the runtime info generated would be triggered
>> by an annotation like @rtti("functions", "fields", "inheritance"). That
>> would give us a good hook to selectively generate rtti when it makes  
>> sense.
>>
>> -Steve
>
> And the you get big problems when you want to use the runtime info of a  
> type you don't control and it doesn't use that attribute.

Big problems being, things are null?  So?  Right now, there's almost no  
RTTI, and we do just fine.

-Steve