With credit for inspiration to David Medlock in this post-- http://forum.dlang.org/thread/d9lnrr$26q3$1...@digitaldaemon.com ...

// Tongue firmly in cheek, I'd like to introduce
// the NAPAPISS principle: (with apologies to SFINAE and RAII)

// NAPAPISS = NAmed Parameters Are simply Passed in a Struct, Silly.

// Yes, indeed, maybe this is what happens after drinking too much of
// the fine wine products from the Napa valley... you start having
// wild flights of fancy of how D might surprisingly soon have
// named parameters....


import std.stdio;
import std.c.stdlib;

void main(string[] arg) {

    // this works today: but with the drawback that the
    // named params must be known at compile time...

    // Here is a named param call,
// as compact as I could get it (see struct below for actual definition).

auto a = myfunc!q{ z= 2; x = -123; y = 200 }(0)(); // calls opCall
    writeln("a=", a); // prints "a=yo", as returned from opCall



    // And here's the runtime version, unfortunately you have to
// pre-declare g because otherwise it won't survive the scope, and // the return value from myfunc.opCall would become inaccessible.
    string g;
    with(myfunc!()(0)) {
          x=rand() % 40;
          y=x/2;
          z=y/2;
          g = call(); // as a side effect, prints 'X 7, Y 3, Z 1'
     }
     writeln("g=", g); // prints "g=yo", as returned from opCall


/*
    // The bright future: this demonstrates that
    // it would be fairly trivial to make some kind of annotation
    // like @kwarg or whaterver, to indicate that a function
    // was using this calling convention:
    @kwarg string f(int a, string b) { body; }

    // so that @kwarg function definitions are lowered to:
    struct f_kw {
      int a;
      string b;
      string f() { body; }
    }

    // and calls to @kwarg functions are transformed
    // from this:
    auto r = f(a=5, b="good");

    // into this:
    f_kw tmp34;
    tmp34.a = 5;
    tmp34.b = "good";
    auto r = tmp34.f();

    // the benefit: named parameters can be used in a natural way,
    // and they need be known only at runtime.
*/
}

// how the 'works today' above examples were implemented:
struct myfunc(string init_string="")
{
   // named keyword or named parameters
   // --the call arguments and their defaults
   int x=0;
   int y=0;
   int z=0;

   this(int) {}
   string opCall() {
     mixin(init_string ~ ";");
     writefln("X %s, Y %s, Z %s", x, y, z );
     return "yo";
   }
   alias opCall call;
}


On Friday, 22 March 2013 at 09:18:33 UTC, J wrote:

The bigger point here is more profound: it is trivial to implement named parameters using structs + trivial lowerings, and this is no way conflicts with function overloading.

D deserves to have named parameters to functions -- it makes for much more legible code, and obviates the need for slow builder patterns. Readable and speedable. It's win-win.

Reply via email to