Associative arrays

[Chris Piker]

On Tuesday, 18 May 2021 at 09:41:06 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grostad 
wrote:
> It  could look the same, but long[string] would now be a 
> shorthand for std.xyz.Map!(long,string) or something like that 
> instead of a special case.

Hum, that's unfortunate.

Though it's a separate issue, I think this means that the error 
messages generated by AA associated code would become neigh 
unreadable, just like many error messages involving templates.  
I'd probably avoid using a library implementation in that case, 
because the usability of a construct is tied to the debug-ability 
of a construct.  Unless I'm mistaken*, the hash function used to 
generate the AA would become part of the data type and thus the 
decent into Type Hell(tm) would begin...

Maybe in a few months I'll have a different opinion, but D 
template error messages really made last week more difficult at 
work, so any library function that encourages dmd to pump out 
more text-walls is something I'll try to avoid using.

--
*always likely