Does D have too many features?

[H. S. Teoh]

On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 08:42:23PM +0200, Andrej Mitrovic wrote:
> On 4/29/12, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:
> > In principle I agree with you. But in practice this doesn't always
> > work.  Take this for example: Prints "0" and "1" as expected. If we
> > now change "point" to a property like this: It will now print "0"
> > and "0". This is a silently breaking change. Sure you can change
> > "point" to return by reference..
> 
> This is a great point and an issue I've ran into and talked about
> before. The compiler really ought to try and convert a call like this:
> 
> foo.property++;
> foo.property+=10;
> 
> into e.g.:
> foo.property = foo.property.opAdd(1);
> foo.property = foo.property.opAdd(10);
> 
> It would make for some really nice APIs if this feature was available.
[...]

To me, the compiler needs to be fixed so that anytime the return value
of a @property is used as an lvalue, it should always try to call the
setter function, or some kind of setter function, instead of the getter
(unless there's no setter, in which case it's OK to call the getter).

I chalk this up to a compiler issue, not a language issue.


T

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