In light on recent discussions of clear() and the distructor it seems to me
that we are going backwards from one of D's great improvements over C++ - the
difference in semantics between structs and classes.
IMO, instead of enhancing class desteructors they should be completely removed
and only allowed on structs with deterministic semantics and all uses cases of
class desteructors should be replaced with structs.
Examples:
class SocketConnection : Connection {
// struct instance allocated inline
SocketHandle handle;
...
}
OR:
class SocketConnection : Connection {
struct {
this() { acquireHandle(); }
~this() { releaseHandle(); }
} handle;
...
}
The suggested semantics of the above code would be that creating a
SocketConnection object would also construct a SocketHandle as part of the
object's memory and in turn that would call the struct's ctor.
On destruction of the object, the struct member would be also destructed and
it's d-tor is called. This is safe since the struct is part of the same memory
as the object.
in short, struct instances should be treated just like built-in types.
