[phobos] Proposal of StopWatch module

[David Simcha]

On 8/19/2010 11:44 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 08/19/2010 09:47 PM, Brad Roberts wrote:
>> On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>
>>> As I'm sure you know we're trying to help the matter with library-based
>>> approaches, but leaving straight in the language a feature that is 
>>> impossible
>>> to make safe is not admissible. Walter and I agree that scope must be
>>> abolished.
>>
>> Cast and union can't be made safe either.. should they be removed?  Why
>> not push scope out of the safed subset and leave the tool around where
>> it's useful?
>
> Cast and union must stay primitives because they can't be done in a 
> library. I'd remove them if I could, but doing so would strictly 
> reduce the language's power.
>
> Andrei
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Well, if you have unions you could probably do casts in a library.  I'm 
not saying we should do this, just that it's possible.  For example:

U cast(T)(T ptr) if(isPointer!T && isPointer!U) {
     union U {
          T t;
          U u;
     }

     U myUnion;
     myUnion.t = ptr;
     return myUnion.u;
}