On 2/15/11 12:24 PM, foobar wrote:
I disagree that the discussion is pointless.
On the contrary, the OP pointed out some valid points:
1. that size_t is inconsistent with D's style guide. the "_t" suffix is a C++
convention and not a D one. While it makes sense for [former?] C++ programmers it will
confuse newcomers to D from other languages that would expect the language to follow its
own style guide.
2. the proposed change is backwards compatible - the OP asked for an
*additional* alias.
3. generic concepts should belong to the standard library and not user code
which is also where size_t is already defined.
IMO, we already have a byte type, it's plain common sense to extend this with a
"native word" type.
Look at the basic data types:
bool, byte, ubyte, short, ushort, int, uint, long, ulong, cent, ucent,
float, double, real, ifloat, idouble, ireal, cfloat, cdouble, creal,
char, wchar, dchar
While size_t is just an alias, it will be used in a similar way to the
above. One can see that it does not fit among these, stylistically
speaking. There seems to be a common pattern here, a prefixing character
is consistently used to differentiate basic types, such as
u-short/short, c-float/float, w-char/char, etc. I wonder if something
similar can be done for size_t. nint comes to mind, for native int, that
is n-int. Sample code:
nint end = 0; // nintendo :)
Having too many aliases seems like a problem to me. Different developers
will start using different names and reading code will become harder.
One would need to learn two things that refer to the same.
My 2 cents: I suggest deprecating size_t and replacing it with a better
alternative that fits with the D language.
