Improve D's syntax to make it more python like

Brian Rogoff brogoff at gmail.com
Sat Mar 22 11:27:48 PDT 2014


On Saturday, 22 March 2014 at 18:08:01 UTC, evansl wrote:
> On 03/22/14 11:14, Brian Rogoff wrote:
> [snip]
>> C++ has a much nastier syntax than D (IMO of course :-) but 
>> the SPECS
>> proposal for a resyntaxed C++ never caught on.
>
> Brian, could you provide a link for this proposal?
> I'd appreciate it.
>
> -regards,
> Larry

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/ModestProposal.html

I think there is an expanded version of this report too, but this 
gives you the flavor. Note that it is based on a fairly old 
version of C++. I prefer the D !() for templates to their <[]>, 
but I prefer their declaration and pointer syntax.

I don't think D's current syntax is really a problem. Well, there 
are some things that vex me a bit, like the multiple "alias this" 
and also the "is" syntax. Even though I prefer indentation 
sensitive syntax to C style syntax, if there were a front end for 
D that used an alternative syntax I would not use it. I suspect 
that I'm hardly unique in that either.


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