Path as an object in std.path

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 6/6/13 1:41 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 6/6/2013 8:57 AM, Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>> On Thursday, 6 June 2013 at 15:41:51 UTC, Dylan Knutson wrote:
>>> FWIW, having Path be an object adds consistency with the rest of
>>> Phobos, which
>>> has many entities which could be expressed as primitives, expressed as
>>> objects. To name a few, DateTime is an object, File is an object, and
>>> DirEntry
>>> is an object. Yes, they could be described as integers, or a pointer,
>>> or a
>>> string, but it's less cognitive load on the developer to recognize
>>> them as
>>> separate types.
>>
>> "Reducing cognitive load" is not the main reason these are objects.
>> DateTime
>> lumps together no less than six integers. File adds automatic resource
>> management via reference counting. DirEntry caches file information to
>> avoid
>> repeated filesystem lookups. And so on.
>
> It's hard to see what value there is in a type that is simply a wrapper
> around an existing type, and which provides implicit conversions
> too/from that existing type so that they can be intermixed arbitrarily.
>
> At the end, that's nothing more than:
>
> alias string Path;

No, you get to check the conversions going one way.

If you destroy, destroy in style. This is a wrong argument.


Andrei