Over the weekend, I attacked opDispatch again and found some old Variant bugs were killed. I talked about that in the Who uses D thread.
Today, I couldn't resist revisiting a dynamic kind of object, and made some decent progress on it. http://arsdnet.net/dcode/dynamic.d (You can compile that; there's a main() at the bottom of that file) It isn't quite done - still needs op overloading, and probably better errors, but it basically works. It works sort of like a Javascript object. Features: opDispatch and assignment functions: Dynamic obj; // assign from various types obj = 10; obj = "string"; obj.a = 10; // assign properties from simple types naturally // can set complex types with one compromise: the () after the // property tells it you want opAssign instead of property opDispatch obj.a() = { writefln("hello, world"); } // part two of the compromise - to call it with zero args, use call: obj.a.call(); // delegte with arguments works too obj.a() = delegate void(string a) { writeln(a); }; // Calling with arguments works normally obj.a("some arguments", 30); Those are just the basics. What about calling a D function? You need to convert them back to regular types: string mystring = obj.a.as!string; // as forwards to Variant.coerce // to emulate weak typing Basic types are great, but what about more advanced types? So far, I've implemented interfaces: interface Cool { void a(); } void takesACool(Cool thing) { thing.a(); } takesACool(obj.as!Cool); // it creates a temporary class implementing // the interface by forwarding all its methods to the dynamic obj I can make it work with structs too but haven't written that yet. I want to add some kind of Javascript like prototype inheritance too. I just thought it was getting kinda cool so I'd share it :)
