Does D have too many features?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday, April 29, 2012 09:53:15 Dmitry Olshansky wrote:
> On 29.04.2012 4:31, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> > For better or worse, the solution for smart pointers in D would be to use
> > opDispatch,
> 
> *cough* alias this *cough*

That's not necessarily a good idea, depending on how it's used. You want to 
avoid having the smart pointer implicitly convert to what it holds such that a 
reference to it leaks. If you're dealing with a pointer to a struct, and alias 
this aliases to the struct (rather than the pointer), then you're okay. But if 
you're dealing with a class, you don't have that option. So, alias this ends 
up leaking a reference to the class, which defeats the purpose of the smart 
pointer. You have the same problem if alias this aliases to the pointer rather 
than what's pointed to.

But regardless of whether you use alias this or opDispatch, you have the same 
problem with regards to ->. In C++, . would be used to call the smart 
pointer's functions, and -> would be used to call functions on the object 
pointed to. In D, the two aren't distinguished - both use . - so you can't 
have any functions on the type pointed to which conflict with the smart 
pointer's functions, or you won't be able to call them (unless another way to 
call them is provided somehow). So, it's definitely something that C++ does 
better with as far as that goes.

- Jonathan M Davis