clear() and UFCS

[Sönke Ludwig]

Am 25.05.2012 15:04, schrieb Alex Rønne Petersen:
> So I was writing a container class and in some test code, I called
> container.clear(). Reasonable enough, right? Hell, it even compiled!
>
> Turns out, my program completely broke at runtime. Apparently, I'd
> forgotten to implement clear() on my container class, and
> *object.clear() was being called instead*.
>
> I don't blame UFCS for this. It just happened to be the reason this
> compiled at all. But, what I do think is: clear is the *ABSOLUTELY MOST
> HORRIBLE NAME EVER* for a function that actually finalizes and zeroes an
> object. Did it not seem obvious to call it, I don't know, *finalize*?
> And even ignoring the naming, having a symbol called clear in the
> 'global' namespace is absolute insanity.
>
> Am I the only person with this opinion?
>

I completely agree! Had the same situation before...

Also I hate that UFCS is doing the same thing that properties did in the 
beginning and have no way to enforce a specific usage. I strongly 
believe that it is a (often important) decision of the library architect 
if a function is to be called normally or as member function style.