On Sat, 03 Sep 2011 18:57:06 -0400, Andrej Mitrovic
<andrej.mitrov...@gmail.com> wrote:
Also, changing structs to classes is gonna *massively* break code
everywhere. Why inheritance instead of a predicate like isInputStream
= is(typeof(T t; t.put; t.close)), you know the drill..
Because it breaks runtime swapping of I/O.
For example, if you wanted to change stdin to a network socket, it's
simple, just assign another InputStream.
However, if stdin is a templated struct, you cannot do this at runtime,
you have to decide at compile time what your stdin is. Believe it or not,
this is not dissimilar to FILE *, except we have more flexibility.
But I realize the implications now. I think I have to revisit this
decision.
We definitely need classes at the lower level, but I think we can wrap
them with structs that are commonly used for RAII and for not breaking
existing code.
-Steve
