On 17/09/2009 16:15, Justin Johansson wrote:
making primitives full objects is the right design and has nothing to do
with bloat which just means the implementation sucks.
consider:
struct Integer(int bits, signed = true) {...}
with specializations for 8, 16, 32, 64
Integer!(32) will have the same size as an int since structs don't have
vtables in D.
of course, for this to be truly useful the compiler needs to understand
"123.methodName()" kind of code.
And I'm guessing you didn't mean auto-boxing either?
of course not. auto boxing is a patch for a broken design.
it's already possible to define in D:
void func(type[] arr, params) {}
and use it as:
type[] arr;
arr.func(params);
applied to strings (which are just regular arrays in D), you can do:
string str = "Hello World";
str.toUpper(); // assume to upper is defined as above.
next step would be to allow the same for literals:
"hello World".toUpper();
now let's take the above one step further. why limit this to arrays? why
not make it work for numbers as well?
123.next(); could be understood by the compiler as
Integer.next(123);
No bloat required.
