DIP 1030--Named Arguments--Community Review Round 1 Discussion

[rikki cattermole]

On 10/02/2020 5:31 PM, rb3 wrote:
> On Monday, 10 February 2020 at 02:25:07 UTC, rikki cattermole wrote:
>> On 10/02/2020 7:32 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>>
>>> Not sure this could be doable in D. But for a main language that 
>>> started out with significant naming of parameters (inheriting this 
>>> from objective-C), it's a good place to look for inspiration here.
>>
>> Alternatively support implicit construction of structs as parameters i.e.
>>
>> void foo(Nullable!int ms);
>>
>> foo(ms: 3);
>>
>> You have to do some mapping internally but it means even if you 
>> deprecate a name, you can still keep the old ones.
> 
> This sounds like a good unification between struct initialization and 
> named arguments.
> 
> So to "enable" named arguments, one would simply declare a struct like 
> this:
> 
> struct BufferCreateInfo
> {
>      const(char)* type;
>      size_t size;
> }
> 
> and then use the struct type in a function argument list:
> 
> Buffer createBuffer(BufferCreateInfo info);
> 
> and call it like this:
> 
> auto buffer = createBuffer({ type: "BufferType", size: 16 }); // or 
> createBuffer(type: "BufferType", size: 16) for syntax sugar
> 
> or if you want mixed named and non-named arguments:
> 
> Buffer createBuffer(BufferCreateInfo info, size_t howMany); // 
> createBuffer(type: "BufferType", size: 16, 10);
> 
> The only change is allowing struct construction on a function parameter, 
> then maybe take it a step further by eliminating the curly braces in 
> function calls. But I don't know anything about compilers...

That is not what I suggested.

What I suggested was given a single argument, automatically 
construct+call the constructor on a struct as defined in a parameter.

It is a 1 to 1 rewrite and would be very simple to do.