Accessors, byLine, input ranges

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> On Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:21:28 -0500, Andrei Alexandrescu 
>>> <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> How is f.byLine clearer and less ambiguous than f.byLine()? Or vice 
>>>> versa for that matter?
>>>
>>> Note that properties can be named things other than byLine.
>>>
>>> -Steve
>>
>> What I meant to say is that in the @property landscape the following 
>> two conventions become suddenly attractive:
>>
>> * Do not use @property at all
>>
>> * Use @property for all nullary functions
>>
>> And they're bound to save a lot of time to everyone involved.
> 
> The first post of this thread was about not invoking a function when you 
> don't want it to be invoked. bearophile was doing:
> 
> auto dg = int function() { ... };
> return dg;
> 
> but he wanted to return a reference to dg, not the result of invoking 
> it. One way to prevent that is to never invoke functions unless they are 
> marked with @property. Or maybe functions defined like that (closures, 
> whatever) should always require () to be invoked.
> 
> If that doesn't sound reasonable, see this:
> 
> auto dg1 = int function() { ... };
> auto dg2 = dg1;
> 
> I'd expect dg2's type to be dg1's type.
> 
> Let's just think a solution to this problem first. :-)

Correct. Just that I fear that it's a bit late for this all. It is 
disheartening enough that Walter got convinced by the past discussion 
and introduced @property without much design - after a FAILED vote no 
less. I strongly believe a better solution is available, but everyone 
wanted the feature so the feature just got born.

FWIW, my take for issues like the above: if a function returns a 
function or a delegate, it can't avail itself of automatic invocation of 
"()". That takes care of a corner case and keeps the mainstream case in 
good shape.

I am not sure of a good solution for problems like

writeln = 2;


Andrei