@property - take it behind the woodshed and shoot it?

[Chad J]

On 01/24/2013 03:45 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Thursday, January 24, 2013 00:34:42 Walter Bright wrote:
>> This has turned into a monster. We've taken 2 or 3 wrong turns somewhere.
>>
>> Perhaps we should revert to a simple set of rules.
>>
>> 1. Empty parens are optional. If there is an ambiguity with the return value
>> taking (), the () go on the return value.
>>
>> 2. the:
>> f = g
>> rewrite to:
>> f(g)
>> only happens if f is a function that only has overloads for () and (one
>> argument). No variadics.
>>
>> 3. Parens are required for calling delegates or function pointers.
>>
>> 4. No more @property.
>
> Another issue to consider is enhancements such as
>
> http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=8006
>
> As a property function is supposed to be an abstraction for a variable, and
> you really should be able to swap out property functions and public variables
> without breaking code, things like
>
> foo.prop += 5;
>
> and
>
> ++foo.prop;
>
> should work. Unfortunately, D's current property implementation is poor enough
> that that code doesn't currently, but that can be fixed in a backwards-
> compatible-manner.
>

I think what you want is semantic property rewriting.
Please see this:
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?DocComments/Property#Semanticrewritingofproperties

> But implementing something like that becomes more problematic without explicit
> properties (potentially even dangerous, depending on what ends up happening
> with those sorts of expressions with non- at property functions which are called
> without parens). Maybe it could be done, but it seems to me that it's the sort
> of thing that should be controlled. We don't want lots of voodoo happening
> with functions called without parens, as we risk getting some nasty bugs when
> using functions that weren't really meant to be properties. But we _do_ want
> some of that voodoo with functions that are designed to be properties.
>
> So, I really think that we need to have explicit properties, even if we allow
> paran-less function calls in some other cases.
>
> But honestly, I wish that we'd just gone with something closer to what C# did
> with properties from the get-go.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis