Should compilers take advantage (abuse) of the new UDA syntax that has been accepted?

[Johannes Pfau]

Am Tue, 18 Dec 2012 20:06:16 +0100
schrieb "jerro" <a at a.com>:

> You could also define them in compiler 
> specific modules as has already been discussed in this thread, 
> but then code that used them without full names (including the 
> module name) would break if an attribute with the same name was 
> added to the language.

We could do this: Language attributes (@property, @safe, ...) are
defined in "lang.attributes" (or choose some other name). Then add a
public import of lang.attributes to object.di. 

GDC attributes are defined in gdc.attributes (or any other name). We
could add an public import to object.di for gdc. Or we don't, that's a
different discussion.

The result is that you can always resolve conflicting attributes:
If gdc introduces @noreturn in gdc.attributes you can now do this:
------------------------
//(Optional if gdc.attributes is imported in
//object.di)
import gdc.attributes;

@noreturn void foo{}
------------------------

If a @noreturn attribute is now added to lang.attributes, the compiler
will refuse to compile the above code as it's ambiguous. But you can
now do this:

@lang.attributes.noreturn void foo{}
or
@gdc.attributes.noreturn void foo{}

or
import gdc = gdc.attributes;
@gdc.noreturn void foo{}