Make dur a property?

[Nick Sabalausky]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2013 00:45:02 +0100
Timon Gehr <timon.gehr at gmx.ch> wrote:

> On 01/23/2013 11:46 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> > On Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:29:14 +0100
> > Andrej Mitrovic <andrej.mitrovich at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On 1/23/13, Adam D. Ruppe <destructionator at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> On Wednesday, 23 January 2013 at 17:13:05 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> >>> Amen! -property MUST die. @property should fix the real problems
> >>> with properties, not leave that broken while adding new problems.
> >>
> >> About @property problems, I've recently ran into this:
> >> ModuleInfo.unitTest is defined as
> >>
> >> @property void function() unitTest() nothrow pure;
> >>
> >> And if I use it:
> >>
> >>      foreach (m; ModuleInfo)
> >>      {
> >>          if (m is null)
> >>              continue;
> >>
> >>          if (auto fp = m.unitTest)
> >>          {
> >>              fp();           // calls it
> >>              m.unitTest();   // doesn't call it
> >>              m.unitTest()(); // calls it
> >>          }
> >>      }
> >>
> >> This is regardless of the -property switch. I would expect the
> >> second call to work. Anyone know if this is filed already?
> >
> > Don't know if it's filed, but yea: Optional empty-parens and
> > the practice of conflating properties with functions is riddled with
> > corner-cases. We can either try to patch over these corner cases
> > with increasingly detailed new rules,
> 
> What are those "new" rules? The rules we already have are sufficient. 
> Now the compiler needs to implement them properly.
> 

Andrei was just suggesting this:

http://forum.dlang.org/post/kdpg5n$2qt2$1@digitalmars.com

> > as Andrei is proposing, or we
> > can just accept "the writing on the wall" (if you'll pardon my
> > 80's-ism) that properties != functions.
> >
> 
> That is not even the point of this discussion.
> 
> a.map!(a=>foo(a,b).map!(a=>2*a)())().days().ago().writeln()
> 

First of all, spacing helps:

a.map!( a => foo(a,b).map!(a=>2*a)() )().days().ago().writeln()

So does not trying to cram everything into a one-liner:

auto descriptiveName = a => foo(a,b).map!(a=>2*a)();
a.map!descriptiveName().days().ago().writeln()

And then there's a few () in there, but not only do I fail to see how
those hurt anybody, they make perfect sense since "days", "ago" and
"writeln" are not data access, they're actions (even if maybe a little
too cutely-named in the case of "ago").

(Of course, I'd question the meaningfulness and feasability of passing
the "days" type constructor a range instead of a scalar, but I get that
that's beside the point ;) )