[Issue 4734] immutable return type specifier without parantheses confuses the compiler

[d-bugmail at puremagic.com]

http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=4734



--- Comment #5 from Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmail.com> 2010-08-26 15:47:47 PDT ---
The error message definitely needs to be improved. However, if you're arguing
for consistency, you could easily argue that the current way is not consistent
because it's not consistent with variable declarations. If I declare

const T foo;

then foo is going to be a const T. However, if I declare

const T foo() {}

then now T is not const. Rather the object that foo is a member of is const.
So, the current situation is _not_ completely consistent. It chooses to be
consistent with one feature and not another because it can't be consistent with
both. However, anyone coming from a C++ background will expect that function
declaration to return a const T and that you would have to put the const to the
right of the function name to make it const. This topic has come up a number of
times, and there are quite a few folks who think that the current situation is
flawed. There's certainly no question that it's confusing. Personally, I'd
argue that function modifiers should just go on the right of the function,
except that that would be confusing with regards to modifiers like private or
abstract which other languages put to the left of the function.

So, I'd strongly argue that it will cause fewer problems if you had to put
immutable and const to the right of the function name to make the function
immutable or const. Yes, it's inconsistent with other function modifiers, but
it's more consistent with variable declarations and other languages., and it
will causes less confusion. The other solution would be to always require
parens for const and immutable types regardless of whether they're for return
types or variable declarations, but I can't imagine that that would go over
very well.

In any case, at minimum, the error message needs to be improved.

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