Use case for std.bind

[Jason House]

Andrei Alexandrescu Wrote:

> Daniel Keep wrote:
> > The problem I have with these suggestions are that you're basically
> > arguing for an incredibly inflexible, context-dependant, completely
> > unintuitive syntax for something you already have working syntax for.  I
> > just don't see the point.
> 
> I'd agree that generally there's a strong bias in this group for adding 
> to the language. Every itsy-bitsy issue comes around, there are a dozen 
> cute syntaxes invented for it right on the spot. And then once every few 
> months, there's the inevitable huge thread "Where did my simple language 
> go???" :o)
> 
> Currying/binding can be done easily with a library, and the 
> implementation is so simple there's no need for a separate file 
> dedicated to it. The one interesting case is currying a function passed 
> by alias. In that case there's no indirect call, just a little struct 
> created that contains the curried state:
> 
> int plus(int x, int y} { return x + y; }
> auto plus5 = curry!(plus)(5);
> assert(plus5(10) == 15);
> 
> typeof(plus5) will be a little struct that may be cumbersome to pass 
> around, in which case you do want to take the toll of the indirect call 
> by writing:
> 
> auto plus5 = makeDelegate(curry!(plus)(5));
> assert(is(typeof(plus5) == int delegate(int));
> assert(plus5(10) == 15);
> 
> This stuff belongs to std.functional. I plan to eliminate std.bind and 
> put currying and binding in std.functional. What do people think?
> 
> Andrei

I've done the whole boost::bind thing before and it sucks. When boost::lambda came out, that was way better. Anonymous delegates are even better. Learning a separate functional syntax will always be a sub par solution to me.

I'll go even further. If D had only what you've proposed for ranges and std.functional but lacked opApply and anonymous delegates, I never would have become a D user. Simple, clean syntax is that important to me...  Please don't recreate boost and STL in D.  They're great libraries, but we can do way better than that!