On 6/10/11 5:14 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 16:21:59 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote:
There is general agreement (which includes myself) that a language
feature is nicer than Flag,
Yes.
and that Flag is nicer than the current state of affairs.
No. Flag!"KeepTerminator".yes is much worse than KeepTerminator.yes. And
Flag!"KeepTerminator" keepTerminator is just, horrendous, in
documentation *or* source.
https://github.com/andralex/phobos/commit/84c75336a4ef04b4c3b1924d7ac9329e744ab8e7
If the rote creation of boolean enums is a problem, why not a mixin?
template Flag(string name)
{
mixin("enum " ~ name ~ " : bool { no = false, yes = true }");
}
mixin Flag!"KeepTerminator";
Because you still need to define it separately from use.
This is no surprise because a specialized language feature will
_always_ be better than one built from tools offered within the
language. It's like God vs. human.
I think the debate is more about how this solution is a step in the
wrong direction more than it's not as good as a real solution.
So the crucial question is whether a language change is warranted.
If the options are Flag or a language solution, the answer is yes. I'd
much rather keep things as they are than have Flag!string.
Keeping things as they are fosters awkward duplication or coupling.
Andrei
