Add := digraph to D

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

On Thursday, 21 June 2012 at 10:01:18 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Thursday, June 21, 2012 11:14:40 Lars T. Kyllingstad wrote:
>> That said, I was still wrong. :)  I just tried it now, and
>> apparently you can write pointless stuff like "auto extern int
>> foo;" and DMD will compile it just fine.  (And, unless that is 
>> a
>> bug, it means D has redefined 'auto' to mean absolutely 
>> nothing,
>> except to be a marker saying "this is a declaration", allowing
>> one to omit both storage class and type.)
>
> I believe that auto has been redefined in C++11 as well. In 
> both, all it really
> means is that the type is inferred.

The history of 'auto' in C++ is actually a bit interesting.  
Here's a bit from Bjarne Stroustrup's C++11 FAQ (which is an 
awesome resource, btw):

"The auto feature has the distinction to be the earliest to be 
suggested and implemented: I had it working in my Cfront 
implementation in early 1984, but was forced to take it out 
because of C compatibility problems. Those compatibility problems 
disappeared when C++98 and C99 accepted the removal of "implicit 
int"; that is, both languages require every variable and function 
to be defined with an explicit type. The old meaning of auto 
("this is a local variable") is now illegal. Several committee 
members trawled through millions of lines of code finding only a 
handful of uses -- and most of those were in test suites or 
appeared to be bugs."


>> auto should probably be removed from the list of storage 
>> classes
>> in the D spec, then.
>
> The spec isn't _at all_ clear on what on earth a storage class 
> is in D. I
> tried to get clarification on that not too long ago and failed.

At the very least, if we keep using that term, it should have 
something to do with how stuff is stored. ;)

-Lars