any news on const/invariant?

[Janice Caron]

On Nov 28, 2007 10:10 AM, Walter Bright <newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> I think it would be pretty hard to give up:
>
>       const x = 3;

Why? It would just turn into something else, like

    const(int) x = 3;
    static x = 3;
    macro x = 3;

...or something. I mean, you get to invent the syntax.


> Also, C++ has const as both a storage class and a type constructor, and
> yes, they have subtly different meanings. This doesn't seem to cause any
> major problems.

That's because C++ behaves as expected. If I declare

    const int * f();

then I get a function which returns a pointer to const int, /not/ a
const member function which returns a pointer to mutable int. I other
words, in C++, the const adheres to the return type, not the
function's "this" pointer. The D behaviour is drastically different
and vastly unintuitive.

I don't know whether this is syntactically considered to be a storage
class or a type constructor in C++, but really, it's irrelevant to me.
What matters is the principle of least surprise. It should do what we
expect it to do, and not something else.