Getting the const-correctness of Object sorted once and for all

[Dmitry Olshansky]

On 14.05.2012 16:37, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Sun, 13 May 2012 16:52:15 -0400, Dmitry Olshansky
> <dmitry.olsh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 14.05.2012 0:48, Stewart Gordon wrote:
>>> On 13/05/2012 20:42, Walter Bright wrote:
>>> <snip>
>>>> I'd like to see std.stream dumped. I don't see any reason for it to
>>>> exist that std.stdio
>>>> doesn't do (or should do).
>>>
>>> So std.stdio.File is the replacement for the std.stream stuff?
>>>
>>> How does/will it provide all the different kinds of stream that
>>> std.stream provides, as well as the other kinds of stream that
>>> applications will need?
>>>
>>
>> I think I've seen proper replacement (or rather a draft of it). If
>> only Steven can be bothered to finish it :)
>
> Yes, I know.
>
> I hate starting things and then not finishing them. Especially when I've
> got so much of it completed...
>
> I'm going to make some time to finish this. I need probably a good few
> days (of solid time). Which means, based on my normal schedule, 2-3
> weeks. Most of the difficult parts are complete, I have a working buffer
> implementation, fast unicode translation (meaning UTF-8, UTF-16,
> UTF-16LE, UTF-32, and UTF-32LE), and a path to use RAII for seamless
> integration with std.stdio.File. I even have preliminary agreement from
> Andrei and Walter on a design (no guarantees they accept the final
> product, but I think I can massage it into acceptance).
>

Great!

> The one last puzzle to solve is sharing. File is this half-breed of
> sharing, because it contains a FILE *, which is a shared type, but File
> is not. Then it does some casting to get around the problems.

And  it all went nice and well till I spotted FILE*. Boom.
I mean I half assumed we are going to drop this crutch. Yep, too harsh. 
So probably leave it as *one* of file backends that features 
compatibility with C. Because IMHO using C-runtime this way is not 
buying us anything else other then C compatibility and "welcome to the 
world of unportable hacks where performance matters".

We need a
> better solution than this, but shared is so difficult to use, I think
> I'm going to have to implement something similar. It has been stipulated
> by Walter and Andrei that fixing this shared situation is a requirement
> for any new replacement. I have some ideas, but I have to play around to
> see if they actually work and make sense.
>
Probably it worths checking how std.stdio does it.

-- 
Dmitry Olshansky