An inconvenient truth

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Dave wrote:
>>
>> Anyhow, this segment of the discussion is somewhat orthogonal to the 
>> rest of it as I think we all agree a Unicode notation will be an 
>> alternative, not an exclusive choice for template instantiations.
>>
> 
> Alternative? That's really what we need; a different group of symbols 
> that denote exactly the same thing, in Unicode no less <g>
> 
> This whole discussion is getting goofy.
> 
> Imagine a code maintainer who has a hard enough time grasping what the 
> template code is doing, much less having to slog through code where the 
> original developer(s) decided to use the Unicode "alternative" depending 
> on what day of the week it was.
> 
> Beautiful!

Oh, one more thought about that. I think the ASCII/Unicode distinction 
changes the space a bit. For example, currently using:

int[] a;

or

int a[];

is decided by nothing in particular. But choosing the chevrons vs. the 
ASCII notation will be largely decided by the toolchain used. That's why 
I doubt any given codebase will be as heterogeneous as it could be with 
regard to other choices.

I wonder what choice the online D documentation should make. Using 
chevrons would be pretty neat, but then random people look at it and are 
like, "how do I ever type this?" etc.


Andrei