Compiler hints, inlining and syntax consistency

[Chris Cain]

On Saturday, 28 December 2013 at 17:23:38 UTC, Ola Fosheim 
Grøstad wrote:
> What you want is a (mild) warning if you use a templated 
> algorithm and that algorithm use a O(N) primitive where it is 
> invisible to the library user. A warning you should be able to 
> suppress (basically telling the compiler "trust me, this is 
> deliberate").

How is that significantly different than the current situation?

If you use walkLength, then that's you telling the compiler 
"trust me, this is deliberate". The only difference is that the 
current behavior doesn't use a warning, it just errors out with 
"this thing doesn't define a length", which is reasonable 
behavior.

FYI, if your thing defines length, then walkLength calls it. So 
it's effectively as fast to use when your thing has length 
defined, otherwise it suggests that you understand that a relaxed 
constraint of O(N) is acceptable and will do that for you if 
length doesn't exist.