Folding similar templates into one

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On Friday, 28 June 2013 at 13:25:54 UTC, monarch_dodra wrote:
> Just because the arguments are known 99% of the time at compile 
> time, doesn't mean they should be parameters. Parameters 
> shouldn't be used to just mean "compile time" anyways, but 
> *specifically* to create different versions of a function or 
> code, which in this case, is not the case at all.

That was probably the idea when templates were conceived of for 
C++, but I think their usage has evolved far beyond that now, 
especially in D. With the advent of CTFE, there's an enormous 
amount that we can do at compile-time, a lot of which isn't 
strictly related to characterizing a function/struct/class/etc. 
on a type. Though I suppose it could be argued that with CTFE, 
doing compile-time template stuff isn't as important.

> Besides, there are scenarios where you could pass these as 
> runtime parameters from higher functions, if you want the 
> exception to "look" like it came from a higher level call.

I was just using assertNotThrown as an example to illustrate my 
point.

> Making these parameters would mean that *any* function that 
> handles lines or filenames would have to be parameterized on 
> that.

I don't think there's anything stopping you from passing __FILE__ 
and __LINE__ as template parameters to some functions, and as 
function parameters to other functions.