const/immutable member functions

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Monday 24 January 2011 12:08:29 Don wrote:
> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> > On Mon, 24 Jan 2011 13:36:36 -0500, bearophile
> > 
> > <bearophileHUGS at lycos.com> wrote:
> >> There are six, seven or more people that wish to do something about
> >> this situation. TDPL is the D2 reference, but few little changes over
> >> its first edition are acceptable if they improve the D language a
> >> little.
> >> 
> >> - Trass3r: asks if the code is ambiguous
> >> - Jonathan M Davis: does't like it and puts const/etc on the right
> >> - Simen kjaeraas thinks it's ambiguous though, and should be
> >> disallowed, or at very least, discouraged.
> >> - Jens Mueller: Preferred style is to write const on the right
> >> - Andrej Mitrovic suggests to use @ but says it clutters up source code.
> >> - I agree with Jonathan M Davis.
> >> 
> >> What other people think about this situation? Do you want
> >> const/immutable to be required on the right, or do you prefer the
> >> current situation, or do you prefer some other solution?
> > 
> > I wouldn't say that I *prefer* the current solution, but the current
> > solution is not so bad that I need it changed.
> > 
> > It works fine, despite being confusing.  If it wasn't consistent with
> > the rest of the attributes, I'd say it was in need of changes, but it
> > fits within the scheme already outlined.
> 
> It's a problem for all of the other attributes as well. I wish it were
> disallowed for all of them.
> Incidentally, putting it afterwards always works. Putting it before
> doesn't always work, due to compiler bugs (for example, prefix 'pure'
> doesn't work for inner functions).

There there is a bug that attributes on constructors don't show up in generated 
.di files if they're on the right.

I think that the real problem with putting them all on the right is that 
attributes such as static, public, and private are on the left in other 
languages, so it would be really weird to require that they be on the right. 
Still, it might be worth it.

- Jonathan M Davis