Flag proposal

[jdrewsen]

Den 11-06-2011 03:26, David Nadlinger skrev:
> On 6/11/11 3:21 AM, bearophile wrote:
>> Andrei:
>>
>>> This module won't compile in today's D, but not for a matter of
>>> principles; it's just a random limitation of the language. (It does work
>>> if you import from within a class or struct.) You can insert most
>>> declarations in a scope, so the ones you can't insert are just awkward
>>> exceptions, unless there's a good reason to actively disable them. Any
>>> code should work if you just wrap another scope around it.
>>>
>>> Walter and I call the above a "turtle feature", in allusion to the
>>> "turtles all the way down" meme. Walter wants to fix this, and similar
>>> limitations that act "unturtly". Imports inside a scope won't be visible
>>> outside that scope, and importing the same module from several different
>>> functions will come at no cost in compilation time.
>>
>> You are allowed to import modules inside functions in Python too
>> (there is a just a minor restriction), but I have never asked for this
>> feature in D because this feature has a cost too. Putting all imports
>> at the top of the module is more tidy, it allows the person that reads
>> the code to find all the used imports very quickly. If they are spread
>> in the module they become less easy to find, you need to use your
>> editor/IDE to search for them.
>>
>> Bye,
>> bearophile
>
> At least allowing imports in unittests would be nice though – I
> frequently find myself writing »version (unittest) {}« blocks before the
> actual unit tests just to import some modules not needed during regular
> builds (yeah, I suppose I'm somewhat pedantic about that).

+1