@property

[José Armando García Sancio]

On Sun, Aug 5, 2012 at 2:32 PM, Kapps <opantm2+spam at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sunday, 5 August 2012 at 14:32:50 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
>>
>> On Sunday, 5 August 2012 at 04:12:23 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
>>>
>>> I'd be very surprised if all that many people compile with -property.
>>
>>
>> Indeed. Sometimes I try it just to see what happens, and always the same
>> results: it doesn't solve problems and complains about code.
>>
>> Some examples of things that break:
>>
>> import std.algorithm;
>> foreach(i; [1,2,3].map!"a+1") {
>>
>> }
>> prophate.d(5): Error: not a property [1,2,3].map!("a+1")
>>
>>
>> Of course, this is relatively new, using ufcs in 2.059, so the breakage
>> probably isn't too bad, but I'm not the only one who writes it this way -
>> I've seen a number of reddit and newsgroup comments do this too, especially
>> when chaining it.
>> [snip]
>
>
> I completely agree, particularl with the UFCS part. UFCS is designed to get
> rid of the horrible mess of (), and now we want to arbitrarily force a ()
> anyways? Seems like it defeats the purpose. To me, when comparing
> range.filter!"a > 2".map!"a*a".countUntil(3)
> to
> range.filter!"a > 2"().map!"a*a"().countUntil(3)
> Those extra paranthesis just don't do anything, they don't give extra
> meaning, they don't accomplish anything useful but distract from the actual
> expression.
>

Just a small comment. I have been following this thread a little and
was somewhat surprise that the argument against enforcing parenthesis
on non-properties is that a call like [1,2,3].map!"a+1" would look
ugly as [1,2,3].map!"a+1"(). To me that is a issue of the
std.algorithm module and not so much of the language.

Personally I am not a huge fan of using strings as a way to pass a
function into a high-order function. I suspect that this string stuff
became popular because D didn't have lambda declarations and type
inference when the module was designed and implemented. I wonder if
the module signatures would look different if you designed it to use
the current features of D.

To be honest, when first saw 'some_array.map!"a+1"()' a few years back
when I first learned about D my knee jerk reaction was: "from where in
the world is 'a' coming from?". I remember I had to read
std/algorithm.d and whatever module implements unary "string"
functions to figure out what was going on. Anyways, I digress.

Part of me looks forward to the day that I can use D reliably another
part of my wants to just wait for Rust to hopefully get it "right".

Thanks,
-Jose