Discussion Thread: DIP 1038-- at nodiscard--Final Review

[IGotD-]

On Thursday, 4 February 2021 at 20:15:07 UTC, Q. Schroll wrote:
>
> I wonder how many non-void functions exist whose return values 
> are usually ignored.

There are plenty of them and I do it all the time. Sometimes it 
is unnecessary and sometimes not and I pay the price. I consider 
@nodiscard a very niche problem in D, as described in the DIP 
mostly for system code. I think that in system code you do so 
much unsafe things anyway and if you want to be sure to check 
return values, then check the documentation of the library that 
you are using. It's a nanny when you need it the least.

I think the DIP is heavily influenced by Rust but there the 
return value is part of the default language error handling which 
makes more sense. In D there are exceptions but this DIP doesn't 
regard them so the benefit is limited.

I think that having a compiler flag that warns when a return 
value is not used should be enough. That should cover those 
projects where always checking the return value is a requirement.