Function name as text

[Craig Black]

"Don Clugston" <dac at nospam.com.au> wrote in message 
news:fj8j1p$2per$1 at digitalmars.com...
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> Don Clugston wrote:
>>> Craig Black wrote:
>>>> "Bill Baxter" <dnewsgroup at billbaxter.com> wrote in message 
>>>> news:fj769h$7ou$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>> Craig Black wrote:
>>>>>> I have been considering porting some C++ code to D.  One of the 
>>>>>> classes I would have to port is an event queue class where each event 
>>>>>> on the queue has a delegate and a text string that points to the 
>>>>>> function name that the delegate refers to.  The function name is used 
>>>>>> to visualize the event queue for run-time debugging purposes.  It is 
>>>>>> important to capture both the class name and the function name as 
>>>>>> text.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In C++ I had a macro called DISPATCH that used the stringize operator 
>>>>>> # to capture the name of the function.  The good (and bad) thing 
>>>>>> about C++ in this case is that when specifying a pointer to a member, 
>>>>>> you must fully qualify the function name, so you would have something 
>>>>>> like this.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> class Foo {
>>>>>> public:
>>>>>>   void bar() {}
>>>>>> };
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Foo *foo = new Foo;
>>>>>> Event event = DISPATCH(foo, &Foo::bar);
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Using the stringize operator, the DISPATCH macro could capture the 
>>>>>> text string "Foo::bar" as well as the member function pointer.  Here 
>>>>>> is the equivalent code in D..
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Foo foo = new Foo;
>>>>>> Event event = dispatch(&foo.bar);
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Which is much more elegant, except that I can't figure out a way to 
>>>>>> capture the name of the function and it's class.  I tried fiddling 
>>>>>> with the stringof operator but that doesn't seem to work.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Any ideas?
>>>>> There probably isn't a way to do it right now without using a string 
>>>>> mixin, which uglies things up on the calling side:
>>>>>
>>>>>      Event event = mixin(dispatch("&foo.bar"));
>>>>>
>>>>> Macros are supposed to give us a way to clean that up.  But for now 
>>>>> you're probably better off just passing the name separately like 
>>>>> dispatch(&foo.bar, "foo");
>>>>>
>>>>> --bb
>>>>
>>>> I guess that's not so bad.  It would be.
>>>>
>>>> Foo *foo = new Foo;
>>>> Event event = dispatch(&foo.bar, "Foo.bar");
>>>>
>>>> That is probably easier on the eyes than the mixin syntax.  It stilll 
>>>> would be cool if the compiler could somehow build the name 
>>>> automatically.
>>>
>>> Or you could use an alias template parameter, to give the syntax:
>>>
>>> Event event = dispatch!(foo.bar);
>>>
>>
>> Really?  Can you take the stringof an alias parameter and get back 
>> "foo.bar" ?  If so then nifty!
>>
>> --bb
>
> Unfortunately it's not quite so simply, since there are so many bugs in 
> .stringof. I'm unable to get the 'foo'.
> ----
> class Foo
> {
>     void bar(int d) {}
> }
>
> void GetName(alias F)()
> {
>     pragma(msg, (&F).stringof); // prints "& bar"
> }
>
> void main()
> {
>     GetName!(Foo.bar);
> }
> ----
> I have however done this previously using .mangleof to retrieve the fully 
> qualified name. The behaviour with alias template parameters was one of 
> the parts of my NameOf module which didn't get into .stringof. Sure would 
> be nice if
> F.stringof worked.

I ran into this same thing with stringof.  Are you sure that this is a bug? 
Has it been officially reported?