Array literals' default type

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Christopher Wright wrote:
> Don wrote:
>> I don't understand why runtime-determined array literals even exist.
>> They're not literals!!!
>> They cause no end of trouble. IMHO we'd be *much* better off without 
>> them.
> 
> You don't see the use. I do. I would go on a murderous rampage if that 
> feature were removed from the language.
> 
> For example, one thing I recently wrote involved creating a process with 
> a large number of arguments. The invocation looked like:
> exec("description", [procName, arg1, arg2] ~ generatedArgs ~ [arg3, 
> arg4] ~ moreGeneratedArgs);
> 
> There were about ten or fifteen lines like that.
> 
> You'd suggest I rewrite that how?
> char[][] args;
> args ~= procName;
> args ~= arg1;
> args ~= arg2;
> args ~= generatedArgs;
> args ~= arg3;
> 
> Just fucking shoot me. Or better yet, whoever removed array literals 
> with non-constant elements from the language.

Relax. It's a condition known as literalitis. :o)

Literals only have you write [ a, b, c ] instead of toArray(a, b, c). I 
wouldn't see it a big deal one way or another, but the issue is that the 
former is a one-time decision that pretty much can't be changed, whereas 
toArray can benefit of the hindsight of experience.


Andrei