On Wednesday, 23 January 2013 at 17:47:44 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
I'm starting to think that perhaps @property should be disposed
of completely.
There is a problem @property can potentially solve: a property
returning a callable.
alias void delegate() Callable;
struct test {
@property Callable foo() { ... }
}
test t;
Callable c = t.foo; // should work
t.foo(); // should call the returned function
t.foo()(); // this should NOT work
Currently, t.foo()() DOES work and t.foo() gives the callable,
without actually calling it (i.e. does not work as it should).
-property and the current @property implementation do not even
try to address this.
My preferred solution is:
1) all functions without @property work exactly the same way they
do now (optional parenthesis, callable as setters with =)
2) all functions with @property are ALWAYS rewritten so that a
reference to them instead references the return value and/or the
setter function.
So the result would be similar to #define t.foo (t.foo()). The
type system then takes care of the parenthesis - no special code
is required for syntax.
