Why can't I inherit (extend) structs?

[Bill Baxter]

Derek Parnell wrote:
> On Mon, 16 Oct 2006 18:49:20 +0200, Johan Granberg wrote:
> 
>> Derek Parnell wrote:
>>> And I'd go so far as to say that the term 'inheritance' is a bit strong.
>>> Maybe just 'derivation' as we would be deriving a new struct definition
>>> from existing definitions, but there is no implied linkage between them at
>>> runtime. 
>> If it is just derived from that is wanted wouldn't it bee easier with a 
>> syntax like this.
>>
>> struct foo
>> {
>> 	int b;
>> 	int c;
>> }
>> struct bar
>> {
>> 	int a
>> 	include foo;
>> 	int d
>> }
>>
>> the struct bar would now have four fields (a,b,c,d)
>>
>> this way their is no way to misunderstand it for inheritance and if one 
>> want a foo* one can always take the addres of the first element.
> 
> Hey ... not bad. 
> 

By "first element" you mean "first foo element in bar"?

Isn't that just a mixin without the namespace?

Anyway, I thought the point of this was so that you could pass a bar* to 
a function that takes a foo*.  If foo is jammed in somewhere in the 
middle of bar then that's not so straightforward.  I guess the compiler 
could automatically offset the bar* to its foo part if it sees the bar* 
is being used in a foo* context.  But that seems kinda tricky to get right.

--bb