BCS Wrote: > Hello dsimcha, > > > Just curious, why doesn't D, and why don't more statically typed > > languages in general, support overload by return type? I haven't > > exactly thought through all the pros and cons, but at first glance it > > seems like an incredibly useful thing. What's the catch that I'm > > missing? > > > > Off hand it's one more degree of freedom (and confusion) in trying to figure > out what type something is. > > int bar(char[] c) > int[] bar(char[] c) > > float baz(int i) > object baz(int[] i) > > auto z = baz(bar("what type is z")); > > float foo(); > object foo(); > > z = foo(); // what foo? > > Also for all other cases in D (and C, and C++, and C#, and ...) the semantics > of an expression is not dependent on what expression it is nested under. > Changing this could have far reaching consequences.
Fortunately, D already has this bug http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=52