On Saturday, 22 December 2012 at 20:24:54 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
They're private in the same way that they're private in C++.
They're
inaccessible (i.e. can't be called), but they're not actually
hidden.
Accessibility is only taken into account after overloading has
been sorted
out. About the only place I'm aware of that this has any
practical effect in
C++ is the fact that you can overload private functions (which
doesn't affect
D, because private functions are never virtual in D). If they
were actually
hidden, you couldn't. Everywhere else, the difference is
academic - primarily
because only classes have any concept of access level.
[snip]
Thanks for taking the time to explain all that. The thread on the
subject was a very interesting read and is a eye opener for me
because I was mostly unaware of the issue. I'm happy I now know
about it because it is something you have to know about otherwise
you can run into difficult to understand problems.
So the problem is that "private" affects accessibility but does
not affect visibility, and for various practical reasons most
people will prefer it to affect (by limiting) visibility in a
similar way as it does with accessibility.
Here's my thinking,
After we've installed the new development process, one of the
things I am hoping we can work towards cleaning up, is the
methods used for maintaining the D specification so that it is
done in a much more efficient and accessible way.
Also the process for making decisions that affect the
specification are not at all clear and seems to follow an ad-hoc
method of endless discussions, often to no effect with poor
retention, and that is a *lot* of wasted effort, so this is an
area where a clear formalized process can have a lot of benefit
for the community in terms of making it operate much more
effectively given the limited resources.
Perhaps at some point after the next dmd version is released and
stabilized, will be a good time to start working on implementing
a process for managing the D specification, assuming of course we
have enough consensus that this is a priority area in need of a
solution. I sure hope most people think so!
--rt
