Overload by return type

Kagamin spam at here.lot
Thu Jan 22 02:30:49 PST 2009


BCS Wrote:

> Hello dsimcha,
> 
> > Just curious, why doesn't D, and why don't more statically typed
> > languages in general, support overload by return type?  I haven't
> > exactly thought through all the pros and cons, but at first glance it
> > seems like an incredibly useful thing.  What's the catch that I'm
> > missing?
> > 
> 
> Off hand it's one more degree of freedom (and confusion) in trying to figure 
> out what type something is.
> 
> int bar(char[] c)
> int[] bar(char[] c)
> 
> float baz(int i)
> object baz(int[] i)
> 
> auto z = baz(bar("what type is z"));
> 
> float foo();
> object foo();
> 
> z = foo();  // what foo?
> 
> Also for all other cases in D (and C, and C++, and C#, and ...) the semantics 
> of an expression is not dependent on what expression it is nested under. 
> Changing this could have far reaching consequences. 

Fortunately, D already has this bug
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=52



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