DIP 1009--Improve Contract Usability--Formal Review

[MysticZach via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 30 August 2017 at 14:05:40 UTC, Mark wrote:
> I see that in the previous review rounds some people suggested 
> various keywords for designating the return value of a function 
> ("return", "result", ...) in an `out` contract. What about 
> using a plain old underscore? For example:
>
> int abs(int x)
> out(_ >= 0)
> {
>     return x>0 ? x : -x;
> }

I think it's good to be consistent with existing out contracts 
which require declaring the variable first. The identifier 
`__result` currently works, but the thing is, it takes fewer 
characters to write `out(r; r >= 0)` than to write `out(;__result 
 >= 0)` (or `out(__result >= 0)`). The possibility of using a 
single character as the return identifier makes it hard, in my 
opinion, to justify complaints about the syntax being "too 
verbose."