Vote for the new std.hash (oops, std.digest)

Jacob Carlborg doob at me.com
Wed Aug 29 00:01:58 PDT 2012


On 2012-08-26 12:19, Manu wrote:
> Looks good, though one thing annoys me as always throughout the D docs,
> liberal use of auto can make them very difficult to understand.
>
> auto  result = hash.finish();
>
>  From the examples where this appears, I have absolutely no idea what
> 'result' could possibly be and what I can do with it, and you're forcing
> me to go and dig further for that information (waste of time).
> Surely there would be no harm in just writing the type there for clarity?
>
> <rant>
> I'd personally like to see auto abolished, or at least heavily
> discouraged for the sake of clarity from code examples throughout the
> docs. I'm constantly having to chase up what auto's may resolve to when
> reading examples >_<
> You may argue this demonstrated un-idiomatic code, and my trouble is due
> to inexperience; I ask, who is most likely to be reading docs?

I think that in general "auto" shouldn't be used. In some case auto can 
be used, i.e. where you don't care/don't need to know the actual type 
and using duck typing instead. If we compare this with OO it would be 
like using an interface instead of the actual type. I guess in 
std.algorithm it would be ok to use "auto".

-- 
/Jacob Carlborg


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