Disappointing inflexibility of argument passing in D

[Carl Sturtivant]

On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 15:57:33 UTC, Tobias Pankrath 
wrote:
> On Tuesday, 11 February 2014 at 15:10:57 UTC, Carl Sturtivant 
> wrote:
>> void main() {
>>       //conversions from string part of the definitions of 
>> Data, Data2
>>    f( "hello", "bonjour"); //no way to do this --- 
>> disappointing
>> }
>>
>> See
>> http://forum.dlang.org/thread/agstjpezerwlgdhphclk@forum.dlang.org
>
> Function calls are a more complicated case because of overload 
> resolution.
>
> If f(string, string) is defined, this will a) break silently or 
> b) require qualification. Both is disappointing, too.

I do not understand why your (a) and (b) provably must be so. 
Please supply an argument: there seem to be other possibilities 
and without a proof that there are not, we may as well seek to do 
the right thing.

In the absence of such comprehension on my part, it seems to me 
that what's needed are some consistent rules that generalize the 
overloading rules about the interaction of opPass and 
overloading, with some priorities so that the best match is 
found. Perhaps some combinations of opPass and overloading should 
be illegal. Not that I've thought this through. :)

But is there a good reason why there isn't a reasonable such set 
of rules in principle? And if not, why do we not have opPass? 
Overtly converting all over the place is less than a happy 
situation.