Help with demangling

[grauzone]

Brad Roberts wrote:
> On 1/11/2010 11:20 PM, grauzone wrote:
>> g wrote:
>>> Hi
>>> Is there a way to demangle .mangleof strings at CTFE
>>> or at least know the fully qualified name of a class or template
>>> instance.
>> If you have to use such dirty tricks, you probably should consider to
>> turn back NOW for your own good. D always lures you into doing tricky
>> template and CTFE stuff, and then you end up either in compiler bugs or
>> other dead ends.
> 
> And how do bugs get fixed?  Step one is finding them.. which typically involves
> writing code that uses the features.  Secondarily, a good number of bugs have
> been fixed over the last couple months, so re-exploring the area might well bear
> good fruit.
> 
> Anyway, doom and gloom pronouncements like this aren't particularly helpful.

Some types of bugs just never seem to disappear: when one specific bug 
got fixed, a regression occurs and you have a similar bug. (This 
happened with forward references in the current dmd release.)

Nothing wrong with a warning.

> That said, demangling a symbol and using that inside compile time expressions
> does sound like one good definition of hell, regardless of how well it works.

Exactly. The thing is just (and that I wanted to say in my previous 
post): you get easily fascinated by the possibilities, but then either 
the language or dmd hit an unexpected barrier and fail. Then you start 
hacks by throwing heaps of CTFE and mixins on the problem, or stuff like 
parsing .mangleof. I believe choosing a simpler solution instead 
(although it's boring in terms of hacking) is better.

> Later,
> Brad