Should pure nothrow ---> @pure @nothrow ?

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

Denis Koroskin wrote:
> On Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:09:05 +0300, Don <nospam at nospam.com> wrote:
> 
>> #ponce wrote:
>>>> Definitely. And what about @deprecated and @override?
>>>  As override is now required, i don't think it should be an attribute.
>>
>> As I understand it, one of the characteristics of attributes is that 
>> you should be able to remove them from the entire program, without 
>> affecting the behaviour.  All they are doing is adding additional 
>> compile-time constraints. (const and immutable aren't attributes, 
>> because you're allowed to overload functions based on them).
>>
>> So @deprecated is definitely an attribute.
>>
>> Is override really required? I've just tested on DMD2.037, and it 
>> still accepts functions without it. So at present it is behaving like 
>> an attribute. But if it became mandatory, I'm not so sure.
> 
> override is required when compiling with -w.
> 
> By Walter's definition, @property is not a valid attribute, because by 
> removing it the program will fail to compile (due to missing parens in 
> accessors). Either that or omissible empty parens will still be present, 
> but I see no usefulness of @property in that case.

But it still doesn't affect the generated binary code, and I think 
that's the important part here.

    @property void foo(int i) { ... }
    foo = 7;

generates the exact same code as

    void foo(int i) { ... }
    foo(7);

We need a definition of attributes/annotations that is a bit wider than 
"can be removed from program without anything happening". Denis' example 
clearly demonstrates this.

Something in the vein of "annotations only provide additional 
information and constraints for the compiler, and do not affect the 
generated code" would be better.

-Lars