On 11/21/2010 10:39 AM, Tomek Sowiński wrote:
Dnia 21-11-2010 o 02:02:35 Tyro[a.c.edwards] <nos...@home.com> napisał(a):
The harm is confusion. Now = on arrays always means aliasing, but with
your proposal, it may *sometimes* mean dupping. Imagine real-life code
with type aliasing and type inference in play, and trying to determine
whether some line makes a dupping string<->char[] conversion or not.
alias char[] firstClassString;
alias firstClassString stringGold;
alias stringGold lightAtEndOfTunnel;
alias lightAtEndOfTunnel daBomb;
alias daBomb iAmThe;
iAmThe man;
if I want to know the actual type of shiznit:
writeln(typeid(man)); // outputs char[]
What would be the harm if everyone just put .(i)dup where it belongs?
Actually, I don't see any harm in using .(i)dup. However, my limited
experience does not allow me to think on the same level as you so I'm
just trying to understand your point a little better. That being said,
I still don't understand the gravity of the implied problem.
The status quo is imposing a tiny upfront tax on the writer of typing
.(i)dup.
The proposal is imposing a minor tax on the reader of knowing another
rule and, in case of convoluted code like above, minor tax of
determining if this rule applies. Plus, some tax on the implementor to
put this rule into the compiler.
OK! Makes sense.
The point is the aggregated tax imposed by the proposal is much greater
because although minor it grows linearly with the number of readers
(code is read much more often then written). And even with finite set of
readers, the tax grows till infinity because with time people forget
what they read, therefore the tax is collected anew.
And think of the gains -- dropping .(i)dup doesn't really buy you much
anyway.
Fair enough. Like I said, I'm not proposing that this happens. Just
trying to understand why it shouldn't. Thanks for entertaining my questions.
