Revised RFC on range design for D2

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

KennyTM~ wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> KennyTM~ wrote:
>>> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> Bruno Medeiros wrote:
>>>>> As a matter of coding style conventions, I would say that using the 
>>>>> implicit property function call feature on a function that changes 
>>>>> state is *bad* style, and surely hope the community would agree on 
>>>>> that.
>>>>
>>>> I sure hope they won't agree to an unsupported assertion.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually I *do* hate this "feature" ^_^.
>>>
>>> And this "feature" has been put to challenged before:
>>>  * Bug 2159. (http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=2159)
>>>  * "Omitting Parens is an Evil" 
>>> (http://www.digitalmars.com/d/archives/digitalmars/D/Omittable_parens_is_an_evil_73881.html) 
>>>
>>> *http://www.digitalmars.com/pnews/read.php?server=news.digitalmars.com&group=D&artnum=17579 
>>>
>>> But nothing got changed.
>>
>> I don't think the bug report has much strength.
> 
> I mean the discussion within the bug report. That's a voice from the 
> community isn't it?!

I agree. But then should we take arguments at face value, or just 
consider them valid because they exist?

>>> To the very least, when using next as a property I assume the call 
>>> won't produce any secondary effect on src from the syntax, since I'm 
>>> just reading a state! Not so if one calls src.next() as the "()" is 
>>> an alarming sign that src _may_ change afterwards. This could is just 
>>> a problem of personal taste since the compiler does not forbid 
>>> src.next(), but not so if you're reading other's code.
>>>
>>> P.S. If src.next() is too lengthy, why not just adopt ++src?
>>
>> Because people (in wake of the recently introduced array operations) 
>> may legitimately expect that to mean "increment all elements of src".
>>
> 
> It's fine not to use ++src since C++ is the only language that uses this 
> syntax for iterators anyway, but may I mention that, to increase all 
> elements of an array you use ++a[], note that there is a [] in the end. 
>  ++a is syntax error anyway.
> 
> Also you should complain about ++p vs ++*p for a pointer p ;)
> 
> Like the () after the function call, which says I want to return the 
> value after the function execution instead of the function object, the 
> [] to my mind also signify I'm working on the content of the array, not 
> the array itself.

I agree, hence my "far-fetched" qualification in the reply to Steve.


Andrei