Time to kill T() as (sometimes) working T.init alias ?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, November 29, 2012 14:24:38 Walter Bright wrote:
> On 11/29/2012 4:47 AM, monarch_dodra wrote:
> > On Sunday, 25 November 2012 at 16:47:08 UTC, Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> >> Thoughts?
> > 
> > I don't know about "killing" T(), but I think there *needs* to be an
> > (easy) mechanism to declare ***and*** run-time initialize an object, in
> > a single and comprehensive line.
> > 
> > I had proposed something 2 months ago here:
> > http://forum.dlang.org/thread/bvuquzwfykiytdwsqkky@forum.dlang.org
> > 
> > The proposal wasn't perfect, but still. We need to figure something out...
> 
> The original idea is that there should be *no such thing* as default
> construction of a struct as being anything other than T.init. The
> default construction of a struct should be a compile time creature, not
> a runtime one.
> 
> Any methods or workarounds to try and make T() produce something
> different from T.init is bad D practice. The compiler tries to
> statically head them off, but probably should do a better job of that.

I believe that it's very common practice in D to use static opCall to 
effectively give structs a default constructor when one is desired. I don't 
think that we need to try and add any default construction mechanism beyond 
that and that init is sufficient for most cases, but I don't see any reason why 
using static opCall for providing something closer to a default constructor 
would be a bad idea, and your post seems to indicate that you think that it 
is.

- Jonathan M Davis