possible "solution" for ufcs

[Steven Schveighoffer]

Someone wrote a very compelling argument for ufcs (uniform function call  
syntax) for ranges, and that is, given a slew of range functions, and a  
slew of ranges, it is nice to use a fluent programming syntax to specify  
wrappers for ranges without having to extend each range type.  For example:

take(10,stride(2,cycle([3,2,5,3])));

vs.

[3,2,5,3].cycle().stride(2).take(10);

And I thought damn it would be nice if ranges could implement ufcs, but  
other types that you didn't want to allow infinite extendability could  
avoid it.  That gave me an idea :)


import std.stdio;

struct ufcs
{
     auto opDispatch(string name, T...)(T args) // appropriate if compiles  
constraint here
     {
         mixin("return ." ~ name ~ "(this, args);");
     }
}

int foo(ufcs x, int y)
{
     writefln("it works! %d", y);
     return y+1;
}

void main()
{
     ufcs u;
     auto x = u.foo(1);
     assert(x == 2);
}

And it does indeed work (2.053)...

So we can have ufcs without any changes to the compiler, and we also make  
it a *choice* for people who don't want to allow infinite extendability,  
and don't want to deal with possible compiler ambiguities.

The opDispatch could even be a mixin itself (I think).

What do you think?

-Steve