shouting versus dotting

[Lester L. Martin II]

Christopher Wright Wrote:

> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> > The problem I see with "!" as a template instantiation is not technical. 
> > I write a fair amount of templated code and over years the "!" did not 
> > grow on me at all. I was time and again consoled by Walter than one day 
> > that will happen, but it never did. I also realized that Walter didn't 
> > see a problem with it because he writes only little template code.
> > 
> > I didn't have much beef with other oddities unique to D. For example, I 
> > found no problem accommodating binary "~" and I was wondering what makes 
> > "!" different. I was just looking at a page full of templates and it 
> > looked like crap.
> > 
> > One morning I woke up with the sudden realization of what the problem 
> > was: the shouting.
> 
> Not only that, but typing it is annoying. First you need to put the 
> right pinky on the shift key, which is a long reach; then you need to 
> put the left pinky on the 1 key, which is a long reach. Then you need to 
> move your left pinky all the way back to the left shift key, which is a 
> short reach, and move your right ring finger up to the 9 key.
> 
> It's a lot of reaching and back and forth.
> 
> But I don't favor '.' since it's already used.

I don't like the idea of '.' either. I currently like the '!'. I am not the best at templates and making templates similar to function call (looks like each other) would make templating so much harder. It should have something that lets you know right off that it's a template. Do you really want a template looking like a function. That has potential to get confusing as your brain argues just at a glance over if a function is called and supplied parameters most functions wouldn't accept or is it a template and the list afterwards is the stuff supplied to the function (I don't remember ever passing to a function (real, real) so looking at that and having my brain think about "OH!" that's why the function call isn't working and the code won't compile, it's because you were dumb enough to supply types instead of values is not very intuitive).

I like the '!' and don't look forward to seeing it changed but if it was to be changed, I'd prefer it not to be a '.' but maybe something along the line of a colon (':') because it doesn't show a function call. I can't remember ever using a ':' in my code except for that import this : function2 type stuff so I think this would be a good idea versus the '.'

Lester L. Martin II