Improving assert-printing in DMD

[Timon Gehr via Digitalmars-d]

On 10/02/2015 01:33 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 10/01/2015 06:41 PM, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> On 09/30/2015 03:10 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>
>>> I encourage making assert smarter seeing (a) it's already used
>>> everywhere so the benefits will come for free  and (b) it's a built-in.
>>> -- Andrei
>>
>> About (b): I'm surprised to see that you seem to have so fundamentally
>> changed your attitude towards magical semantics for built-ins.
>
> I haven't - I still think making "assert" a built-in and ascribing a
> keyword to it was a minor mistake. But then that sail has shipped, so
> let's make the best use of the situation. -- Andrei
>

Ok, but if assert gets special error printing capabilities that are not 
available at the same level of convenience to e.g. enforce, then this is 
a roughly analogous situation to having e.g. B[] : const(A)[] for B : A, 
which cannot currently be simulated in the library in a satisfactory 
way. Those situations usually add friction. They tend to result in 
frustration and often culminate in proposals for new, often ad-hoc 
language features. IMHO, there ought to be a better way, but I don't 
have a very strong opinion about this particular case.