language_fan wrote:
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:26:11 +0200, Don thusly wrote:
CTFE doesn't mean "string mixins using CTFE". It just means CTFE. (BTW
you can do string mixins with templates only, no CTFE, if you are
completely insane).
CTFE without mixins is rather limited form of metaprogramming. You can
basically only initialize some static non-code data, and not much more.
That's a lot, though. For example, you can perform the compilation step
for a regexp, and determine whether it needs to be implemented with
backtracking, or not. CTFE is perfect for parsing DSLs.
String mixins with templates was the only way to go before CTFE became
possible -- those were the times!
They were very short times <g>. String mixins were introduced in
DMDD1.005, (5 Feb 2007) and CTFE came in 1.006, ten days later.
But that was indeed a very fun time for D.
I did a lot of early metaprogramming work with template value
parameters, before string mixins. It was quite ugly, and painful to
write. D metaprogramming techniques have gradually got less hacky over time.
