Case Range Statement ..

[Bill Baxter]

On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 12:24 PM, Walter
Bright<newshound1 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 9:09 PM, Walter Bright<newshound1 at digitalmars.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Bill Baxter wrote:
>>>>
>>>> If it's internal to the parse tree can't you make the syntax whatever
>>>> you
>>>> want?
>>>> Something like (expr1 __exprSequencer expr2) should do just fine, right?
>>>> No reason it has to be a precious one-character symbol syntax.
>>>
>>> What if you're writing a program that generates D code?
>>
>> If you're generating code which is so tricky that it needs to rely on
>> comma expressions,
>
> Writing code that requires that "A" be executed before "B" is not tricky or
> unusual.

Right.  And usually that's written   A; B  Writing code that requires
A to be executed before B *and* requires that the whole thing act like
a single expression is much more rare.

>> then I doubt it will be something that users will
>> be expected to read and/or edit.  In which case, again, it doesn't
>> matter how ugly the syntax is.  "__exprSequencer" would do just fine.
>
> Making D metaprogramming spectacularly ugly will not help bring
> metaprogramming to the mainstream and will drive away the kind of people who
> can create fantastic metaprogramming applications.

Then pick something less ugly!  Double colon is still free in D isn't it?

My point of arguing this is just that I'm still hoping commas could be
used to make a tuple literal syntax.
And now Andrei is going to jump in and say "why do we need that?  We
want to fish not eat fish, lookee I've made a fish hook for you, it's
spelled: "Tuple!()""  or somthing like that.

P.S. making compile-time reflection spectacularly ugly is also not a
good way to bring metaprogramming to the mainstream.  (Looking at you,
__traits).

P.P.S. on the other hand,  Python uses double underscores all over the
place and people call it a beautiful language.  Go figure.  I guess
it's only ugly till you have a few dozen of them.  Then it's a
"pattern".

--bb