Revised RFC on range design for D2

[Michel Fortin]

On 2008-09-27 00:01:05 -0400, Christopher Wright <dhasenan at gmail.com> said:

> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> "Andrei Alexandrescu" wrote
>>>> 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".
>> 
>> So in one case, you believe people's assumptions aren't important, i.e. 
>> an assumption that .next without parens will not change anything on the 
>> object, yet in another case you believe people's assumptions are the 
>> main argument. This doesn't sound consistent.
> 
> What if it were src.advance instead? Since it's a verb, it's easier to 
> associate it with an action that might change state rather than simply 
> reading the state of src.

Very true.


> For me, I use the no-parentheses version in either of these cases:
> 1. I'm using the function as a property (auto name = field.name).
> 2. The function name is a verb (mocks.replay).
> 
> This seems reasonably unambiguous in my personal experience, though it 
> helps that I have few locals in most of my methods and use a prefix for 
> private members.

Indeed. I think all function names which are not simple getters or 
setters should have a verb in their name, especially in D where there 
is no syntax difference between a property and a function.

And I like pretty much the feature of not having to put parenthesis for 
function calls with no arguments. The only problem I have with it is 
that it makes working with delegates a little messier, especially when 
dealing with delegate properties which just *can't* behave as normal 
variables.

-- 
Michel Fortin
michel.fortin at michelf.com
http://michelf.com/