property syntax strawman
John C
johnch_atms at hotmail.com
Sun Aug 2 06:49:51 PDT 2009
Marianne Gagnon wrote:
>> The alternative is to have a unique syntax for properties. Ideally, the
>> syntax should be intuitive and mimic its use. After much fiddling, and
>> based on n.g. suggestions, Andrei and I penciled in:
>>
>> bool empty { ... }
>> void empty=(bool b) { ... }
>>
>> The only problem is when a declaration but not definition is desired:
>>
>> bool empty;
>>
>> but oops! That defines a field. So we came up with essentially a hack:
>>
>> bool empty{}
>>
>> i.e. the {} means the getter is declared, but defined elsewhere.
>>
>> What do you think?
>
> I liked the original idea... but this declaration syntax is a total can of worms. Like others pointed out, would the compiler automatically turn all functions with empty bodies into declarations? Would empty setters be considered a declaration? What if I actually *want*
> to use an empty body as definition? Or what if I accidentally leave a body empty when I didn't want to?
>
> Like someone else pointed out, existing keywords could be reused :
>
> bool empty
> {
> in(bool value)
> {
> _my_empty = value;
> }
> out
> {
> return _my_empty;
> }
> }
>
> I like this quite a bit. I never wrote any compiler, granted, but I don't think it'd be that hard to implement - and doesn't introduce any new keyword.
I'd be more than happy with that.
>
> Or, alternatively, if you really wish to keep them separate, bool empty= { ... } isn't intuitive, as Andrei pointed out, but is already less error-prone than the empty-body declaration idea I believe
More information about the Digitalmars-d
mailing list