"Walter Bright" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
>> - Distributing in source form makes certain things possible that wouldn't
>> otherwise be, like virtual template functions (in theory, even if not in
>> actual D practice).
>
> Yup again, Java can't do compile time polymorphism!
>
I'm not sure whether we're talking about the same thing. I mean something
like this:
module A;
class Base {
void foo(T)(T x) { }
}
module B;
class Derived : Base {
void override foo(T)(T x) { }
}
I know D doesn't currently allow that. But my understanding is that if
module A is available in source form, then there's no technical issue
preventing it. So if a dev house wants to keep their source private, then
they can't expose any API like that even if their language did normally
allow such a thing. Therefore, keeping source private limits what can be
done.
Of course, even just exposing any old template requires at least some code
to be exposed (or easily-reconstructable).
> BTW, I realized around 10 years ago that what you can do is lex D source
> and use the token stream as your "intermediate code". It should work
> great, be compact, and fast.
Would that be useful in any significant way? Wouldn't re-lexing be very
quick too? And in my limited experience, lexing seems to be a little easer
than parsing, too.
