"body" keyword is unnecessary

[Jonathan M Davis]

On 2011-03-27 22:23, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 3/23/2011 3:17 PM, Alvaro wrote:
> > D already has a long list of keywords, reserved words can't be used as
> > identifiers, which can be annoying. "body" in particular is a common noun
> > that programmers would gladly use as a variable name in physics
> > simulation, astronomy, mechanics, games, health, etc. I think "body" can
> > be removed from D with no harm, and with the benefit of allowing the
> > name as identifier.
> 
> Body is not strictly necessary to parse it. But it makes for a nice
> "anchor" when the in and out clauses get long.
> 
> In any case, we are currently working on getting temp destruction to work
> correctly, and after that we'll work on fixing issues with const. I think
> these are the most important things we should be working on at the moment.

I'll be _very_ excited to have both the destructor issues and the const issues 
sorted out. They are some of the more annoying quality of implementation 
issues at the moment.

I'm not against body no longer being a keyword if it's reasonable to leave the 
language as-is, as has been suggested here, and not have body be a keyword, 
but I have to concur that it's not exactly a high priority issue. However, 
it's much easier to discuss, which is probably part of the reason that it's 
being discussed so much.

Then again, in many cases at this point, what we need isn't really more 
suggestions on how to improve the language or libraries but help in 
implementing improvements. Suggestions are by no means bad, but given 
everything else that needs doing and how few people there are to do it, 
suggestions are not likely to be implemented soon, even if they're good.

If no one has done so already, this suggestion would be worth creating an 
enhancement request in bugzilla for, but I'd much rather see other quality of 
implementation issues fixed rather than have such an enhancement implemented 
right now. The enhancement is nicely backwards compatible, so it can be done 
at any point in time later without breaking any code or having to way for a 
possible D3.

- Jonathan M Davis