Andrei Alexandrescu: > Great point. My hope is that one day I'll manage to convince Walter and > Sean to simply replace V[K] types with AssocArray!(K, V) and then make > AssocArray a regular template inside object.d. The current > implementation of associative arrays looks... brutal.
Maybe some compromise can be found. I think the current syntax is good enough. A possible idea is to translate the current AA code to D and create a D module (that object imports, if you want) that contains something like that AssocArray!(K, V). Some very useful things are missing in the current AAs: - OpEquals among AAs, very useful in unit tests, to assert that functions return a correct AA. - Empty AA literal (or expression, I currently use AA!(T, S)). - Empty AAs can be false. - A way to clear an AA, like aa.clear or aa.clear(); - A way to perform a shallow copy, like aa.dup - Possibly lazy view of keys, values and key-value pairs, as in Java and Python3. - A more precise management by the GC. Then the compiler can map the current syntax to the AssocArray!(K, V) template struct/class and its functionality. I don't know if this can be done. It's also a way to reduce the C code and translate some of it to D. Bye, bearophile
