What Makes A Programming Language Good

[Vladimir Panteleev]

On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 15:51:58 +0200, Adam Ruppe <destructionator at gmail.com>  
wrote:

> Jim wrote:
>> Why can't the compiler traverse this during compilation in order to
>> find all relevant modules and compile them if needed?
>
> How will it find all the modules? Since modules and files don't
> have to have matching names, it can't assume "import foo;" will
> necessarily be found in "foo.d". I use this fact a lot to get
> all a program's dependencies in one place.

I think this is a misfeature. I suppose you avoid using build tools and  
prefer makefiles/build scripts for some reason?

> The modules don't necessarily have to be under the current
> directory either. It'd have a lot of files to search, which might
> be brutally slow.

Not if the compiler knows the file name based on the module name.

> ... but, if you do want that behavior, you can get it today somewhat
> easily: dmd *.d, which works quite well if all the things are in
> one folder anyway.

...which won't work on Windows, for projects with packages, and if you  
have any unrelated .d files (backups, test programs) in your directory  
(which I almost always do).

-- 
Best regards,
  Vladimir                            mailto:vladimir at thecybershadow.net