New syntax for string mixins

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Jacob Carlborg" <doob at me.com> wrote in message 
news:ie8i8c$15f0$1 at digitalmars.com...
> On 2010-12-14 19:13, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> "Graham St Jack"<Graham.StJack at internode.on.net>  wrote in message
>> news:ie76ig$b2v$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>
>>> What you are suggesting here seems to be a way to dramatically reduce 
>>> the
>>> complexity of code that generates source-code and mixes it in. I think
>>> something like that is needed before this mind-bogglingly powerful 
>>> feature
>>> of D can realise its potential.
>>>
>>
>> I think a decent string-template library could probably come very close 
>> to
>> the proposal without needing any language changes at all:
>>
>> string get_set(T, string name)()
>> {
>>       return
>>       q{
>>           @type _ at name;
>>
>>           @type @name ()
>>           {
>>               return _ at name;
>>           }
>>
>>           @type @name (@type @name)
>>           {
>>               return _ at name = @name;
>>           }
>>       }.replace( ["@type": T.stringof, "@name": name] );
>> }
>>
>> class Foo
>> {
>>       mixin(get_set!(int, "bar")());
>> }
>>
>> There are definitely some things about the proposal that are better than
>> with this, but I just wanted to point out that the value of the proposal
>> should probably be evaluated against something roughly like the above 
>> rather
>> than something that does a bunch of procedural string splicing.
>
> The whole point of the idea was to get rid of the strings and the mixin 
> expression (as it looks like to day).
>

While I'm not necessarily opposed to the idea of getting rid of the strings, 
I guess I don't really see what improvement your proposal provides other 
than not having to manually specify the mapping of "replace what identifier 
with what data".

Getting rid of the "mixin" I see as a separate issue. We could just as 
easily say that given the function "string get_set(...)":

    @get_set("int", "bar");
    or
    @get_set int bar;

...Is shorthand for, or is even the new syntax for:

    mixin(get_set("int", "bar"));