On Monday, 15 February 2016 at 22:48:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
rears its head again :-)
Head Const is what C++ has for const, i.e. it is not
transitive, applies to one level only. D has transitive const.
What head const will do for us:
1. make it easy to interface to C++ code that uses const, as
currently it is not very practical to do so, you have to resort
to pragma(mangle)
2. supports single assignment style of programming, even if the
data is otherwise mutable
The downside is, of course, language complexity.
I think that increasing language complexity for the sake of C++
integration is a dubious trade-off, especially since "all" that's
required is correct name mangling. There's no guarantee of what
the C++ side can do with any type of constness anyway, I'd say
that any "extern(C++)" mangles as C++ would and leave it at that.
Atila
