On 2009-08-02 03:43:43 -0400, Walter Bright <newshou...@digitalmars.com> said:
Having optional parentheses does lead to unresolvable ambiguities. How
much of a problem that really is is debatable, but let's assume it
should be resolved. To resolve it, a property must be distinguishable
from a regular function.
One way is to simply add a "property" attribute keyword:
property bool empty() { ... }
property void empty(bool b) { ... }
The problem is that:
1. there are a lot of keywords already
2. keywords are global things
Glad to see you're giving it some tought. :-)
The alternative is to have a unique syntax for properties. Ideally, the
syntax should be intuitive and mimic its use. After much fiddling, and
based on n.g. suggestions, Andrei and I penciled in:
bool empty { ... }
void empty=(bool b) { ... }
I like that. But then (just a question) can you do:
void empty+=(bool b) { ... }
void empty++ { ... }
void ++empty { ... }
?
The only problem is when a declaration but not definition is desired:
bool empty;
but oops! That defines a field. So we came up with essentially a hack:
bool empty{}
i.e. the {} means the getter is declared, but defined elsewhere.
What do you think?
I'd prefer this, which can't be misinterpreted as an empty statement:
bool empty { ... }
It also happens to scale well to any function delcation:
void foo() { ... }
void empty=(bool b) { ... }
The way I see it, the other function declaration syntax would still
work, except for property getters where you'd need this special one.
--
Michel Fortin
michel.for...@michelf.com
http://michelf.com/
