On Friday, 5 July 2013 at 08:15:35 UTC, Nicolas Sicard wrote:
On Thursday, 4 July 2013 at 23:52:35 UTC, bearophile wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu:
Where does the whole "stronger typing" comes in? This is
poppycock. We need real arguments here.
Maybe it's a matter of definitions, for me having "null" as
literal for empty array, null pointer, empty associative
array, and more is more weakly typed compared to having a
literal like [] usable only for empty dynamic arrays (and
strings), a literal as [:] usable only for empty associative
arrays, and null for pointers, class references (and little
else like a Nullable).
Bye,
bearophile
While I agree with the need to have a literal for
non-initialized arrays and another one for initialized but
empty arrays, that is null and [] respectively, I can't see the
necessity for [:]. The literal should be used to mark the
difference between null and empty, not the difference between
plain or associative, shouldn't it?
For me, having to type
int[string] foo = [:];
instead of
int[string] foo = []; // same semantic
would just be a source of confusion.
Keep in mind that arrays are value that *look* like reference
types. You can get an array that's non-null with no allocations.
Associative arrays, on the other hand, are true reference types.
This means initialization *necessarily* implies allocating a
payload. Having "[]" "maybe"/"maybe not" allocate is not that
good of an idea. Using "[:]", on the other hand, really stresses
the fact that "this AA needs to be empty but initialized, and I
know I'm going to allocate for it".
