compile-time explicitness

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:15:25 -0400, Gor F. Gyolchanyan  
<gor.f.gyolchanyan at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's not a performance issue.
> You can't do this:
>
> if(_ctfe)
>     to!string(...);
> else
>     toStringNow!(...);
>
> because the toStringNow!(...) won't compile, because it's argument is  
> not a
> compile-time value.

Well, first, I was unfamiliar with toStringNow (I thought it was simply a  
different function), but second, all you need is a ctfe-able toString  
function.  to!string should be ctfe-able for many things, a lot of work is  
going into making things in phobos more compile-time ready and pure-ready.

> about non-functional style templates:
> When you have a complex computation in your templates, you're forced to  
> create
> additional private templates to divide the computation and put it  
> together in a
> single expression.

Can you give an example?  I'm still not understanding why you can't just  
use ctfe.

-Steve