byKey and byValue: properties or methods?

[Marco Leise]

Am 19.01.2012, 19:19 Uhr, schrieb Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com>:

> On Thursday, January 19, 2012 11:33:24 Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 1/19/12 11:29 AM, torhu wrote:
>> > The reason would be that if it looks like field access, it should  
>> behave
>> > like that.
>>
>> The difficulty is in knowing where to stop. The only things that behaves
>> exactly like a field access is a field access. This is a known issue in
>> C++, e.g. smart pointers "are smart but aren't pointers".
>
> Yeah. It's generally expected that properties may return stuff which is
> generated on each call. They're _simulating_ a member variable rather  
> than
> being one. I don't think that the fact that a new value is returned each  
> time
> is particularly relevant, especially since as long as the AA hasn't been
> altered, the returned values are equivalent.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

I just came across some C++ code and came to the conclusion, that  
properties and indexed access should not modify the structure. In other  
words all my @property and opIndex will probably also by const. An  
exception to that being caching and access counting.