Kill implicit joining of adjacent strings

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Thu, 11 Nov 2010 08:26:40 -0500, Gary Whatmore <no at spam.sp> wrote:

> Yao G. Wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 10 Nov 2010 20:34:07 -0600, bearophile  
>> <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> > Do you seen anything wrong in this code? It compiles with no errors:
>> >
>> > enum string[5] data = ["green", "magenta", "blue" "red", "yellow"];
>> > static assert(data[4] == "yellow");
>> > void main() {}
>> >
>> >
>> > Yet that code asserts. it's an excellent example of why a sloppy
>> > compiler/language sooner or later comes back to bite your ass.
>>
>> Stop blaming the compiler for your own carelessness.
>
> I fully agree with this. It's odd to see only few people opposing this,  
> because the feature has no merit. If the language needs to be overly  
> verbose in every turn, bearophile could go and use Java instead.

The "feature" of concatenating two strings together automatically without  
any operator has no merit.  In C it was important because C does not have  
any other way to concatenate multiple strings together at compile-time.   
With the way the preprocessor works, it would be very difficult to  
concatenate string literals with macros.  But we don't have a preprocessor  
in D and D *does* have constant folding with the ~ operator.

This is a no brainer -- we need to kill auto string concatenation.  It  
serves no purpose, there is already a clear, concise, unambiguous  
alternative that fits exactly into the language grammar.

It's like the operator precedence of logical and comparison operators was  
a carryover from the B language.  I'm sooo glad we got rid of that.

>> > In C the joining of adjacent strings is sometimes useful, but explicit
>> > is better than implicit, and D has a short and good operator to  
>> perform
>> > joining of strings, the ~, and D strings are allowed to span  
>> multi-lines.
>>
>> I find it useful, and I like it. I like to break long strings into  
>> smaller
>> ones
>> and put each one in one line. I know that you can do that using one  
>> single
>> string, but
>> some syntax hightlighters don't like it that way.
>
> Multiline strings have traditionally required stupid hacks. D might be  
> the only string oriented language with so many useful string literals.  
> Very useful in string processing.

In this case, it's not a hack, it fits precisely within the definition of  
the language.  It's like saying:

1 +
2

is a 'hack' to get multi-line addition working.  How many times have you  
written:

if((condition1 && condition2) ||
    condition3 ||
    condition4 ||
    ...)

To keep your sanity when writing complex if statements?  Have you ever  
felt that adding those pesky || at the end of each line was a 'hack'?   
This is exactly the same thing.

-Steve