Proposition for change in D regarding Inheriting overloaded methods

[Christopher Wright]

Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> If there is a class A, which is a base class of class B, where A defines a 
> method foo(args),  and B does not define foo(args), then the compiler should 
> fail to compile B indicating that the user must define B.foo(args) by 
> override or by alias.

And if you don't want to provide access to those overloads? If, for 
instance, the new overload computes something that was previously passed 
in as an argument, but due to your changes, you cannot compute that 
argument. With your solution, I'd have to override that method and have 
it throw an exception. And put it in the docs that the method shouldn't 
be used.

How about having a strong and weak override? A strong override hides all 
overloads of the function it overrides, while a weak one hides only the 
overload that matches it. Then it's unambiguous, and only a matter of 
defining syntax. After all, Walter doesn't implicitly know whether each 
individual programmer wants to allow inherited overloads to work, and 
neither does dmd, unless they're explicitly told.