Casting by assigning to the right ...

[aliak]

On Tuesday, 14 April 2020 at 21:45:22 UTC, Manfred Nowak wrote:
> On Tuesday, 14 April 2020 at 13:03:19 UTC, aliak wrote:
>> Also, you can make it a generic free function if you want.
> [...]
>> i.castAssign(s); // cast and assign s
>
> And because the pair of parenthesis can by exchanged by a `=', 
> giving
>   `i   .castAssign=   s;'
> you just evaluated, that there is in addition to  {+, -, *, /, 
> %, ^^, &, |, ^, <<, >>, >>>, ~} an additional bunch of ops for 
> the op-assignment-operator giving the resulting form in regular 
> language parlor:
>   '.' ident '='
>
> Allowing ident to be an empty string would even include `.=' to 
> be recognized as an assignment operator. This is very close to 
> the assignment operator in pascal `:='.
>
> What is the better annotation of a coder knowing, that a cast 
> is being executed under the hood: `._=' or `:='?

I don't think either of those tell me about a cast happening. 
Maaaaaybe .cast= but I'm not sure and it feels weird.