[phobos] Time to get ready for the next release

[Jacob Carlborg]

On 23 apr 2011, at 23:20, Robert Jacques wrote:

> On Sat, 23 Apr 2011 16:06:35 -0400, Jacob Carlborg <doob at me.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On 23 apr 2011, at 17:32, David Simcha wrote:
>> 
>>> On 4/23/2011 11:24 AM, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
>>>> I think I would like to have something in the middle of strict and loose semantics. I would like that functions marked with @property have to be called like a field:
>>>> 
>>>> auto bar = foo.field;
>>>> foo.field = 3;
>>>> 
>>>> But functions not marked with @property still can be called without the parentheses:
>>>> 
>>>> foo.bar();
>>>> foo.bar;
>>> 
>>> Maybe there's been some misunderstanding, but actually this is what loose semantics means.  Loose semantics (at least as I understand them) mean stuff marked @property would not be callable using method syntax, and this rule would be used to disambiguate the corner cases, but nothing would change for stuff not marked @property.
>> 
>> Ok, then I probably misunderstood. What about:
>> 
>> writeln = "foo";
>> 
>> is that already fixed?
> 
> If by fixed, you mean doesn't compile, then yes, it's fixed. But this might be a quality of implementation issue, regarding method syntax and templates and not a true theoretical fix. Case in point: printf = "foo" works. However, while ugly, neither writeln = "foo" nor printf = "foo" are doing something the original author didn't intend. The greater violators (which actually caused bug reports/confusion) are those where the statements became nonsense, like math_function = 5 or obj.factory_method = 6.[1] Fixes for most of these issues exist: Not using the result from a strongly pure function should be an error, not matter how it's called. And const/immutable methods shouldn't be assignable, since you can't assign to a const or immutable variable. Static/free functions can't be marked const/immutable, but considering the only thing they can modify is global state, pure is equivalent. So neither strongly nor weakly pure functions should be assignable.

If writeln = "foo"; doesn't compile but printf = "foo"; does then I would consider it not fixed. The way I would want @property to behave is disallow bar = "foo"; for functions not marked with @property. But still allow functions not marked with @property to be callable without parentheses.

> From a theoretical perspective, assignment is a function which stores a value (in addition to taking an input and producing an output, like any other function). Since we can cleanly express in D whether a function modifies external state (i.e. stores values) via pure/const/immutable, we can detect and error on non-consistent uses of assignment. This won't be perfect, because not all functions which modify state store something from a high-level point of view, but it covers a lot (all?) of the common use cases.
> 
> Regarding your question, writeln/printf = "foo" would still be valid under these new tests; but to play devil's advocate, maybe you do kernel development work, etc, and mentally model I/O as writing to specific memory locations. That mental model actually prefers printf = "foo" to printf("foo").
> 
> P.S. I've never liked the writeln = "foo" example, because it's of the form verb = value, and therefore feels like a straw men. The more realistic situation is noun = value, but its very hard to find this kind of example that is A) named in a way such that a user might reasonably make an assignment to it and B) also feels natural as a method call.
> 
> [1] In the actual examples, the use of a noun for the factory function name lead to the confusion.
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-- 
/Jacob Carlborg