Named arguments via struct initialization in functions

[Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 9 March 2016 at 12:55:16 UTC, Idan Arye wrote:
[...]
>> An other point on my wish list would be to allow string symbol 
>> notation
>> like in ruby. Than using hashes (AA) for parameters gets more 
>> convenient:
>>
>> :symbol <= just short for => "symbol"
>>
>> h[:y]= 50; h[:x] = 100; // <=> h["y"] = 50; h["x"] = 100


> String symbols are Ruby's(and many Lisps', and maybe some 
> other, less popular languages) way to do untyped enums and 
> untyped structs. It's a dynamically typed languages thing and 
> has no room in statically typed languages like D. D mimics 
> dynamic typing to some extent by creating types on the fly with 
> it's powerful templates mechanism - but a new type still needs 
> to be created. D is geared toward reflection on types at 
> compile time, not towards type detection at run-time...
Thats true.
>
> Allowing something like `auto params = [:y : 50, :x : 100]` 
> won't really solve anything. It works nicely in Ruby, because 
> Ruby has dynamic typing and with some syntactic sugar you get 
> elegant syntax for dynamic structs. But in a structured 
> language like D, you run into the problem that `[:y : 50, :x : 
> 100] is an associative array with a determined type for it's 
> values, so you can't do things like `[:y : 50, :x : "hello"]` - 
> which greatly limits the usability of this syntax.
Yes.Ok.
What I like about the :symbol notation is, that a string witch is 
used
only to distinguish between different objects in an Hash / AA has 
a complete different
purpose than a string used to be displayed for the user.

I think that
           writeln("Name", a[:name]); is easier to read, than
           writeln("Name", a["name"]);

especially if the structures are getting bigger, or you are in a 
vibe.d jade template string where you would have to use 
additional quoting to write:

           a(href="a[\"url\"]") a["link_text"]

           a(href="a[:url]") a[:link_text]

May be I should get rid of this by using a struct for my mysql 
results to display?
(=> a.url and a.link_text )

Just my 2 Cents :-)