On Monday, 19 March 2012 at 01:29:50 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
In C++, for example, you can define operator<() and operator>()
in
completely arbitrary ways, which means they can be totally
unrelated to
each other, and return results that have nothing to do with
each other.
This causes inconsistency in that a<b does not necessarily
imply b>a,
and vice versa. Which makes for inconsistent code.
While I totally get that concern, I've never really seen it
become a real issue in any of the large C++ systems I've worked
on. Maybe I've just been lucky? Ruby also allows these arbitrary
operator redefinitions, and it's never been an issue in the large
Ruby systems I've worked on, either. Python also allows them,
though I don't have much Python experience.
In fact, a lot of the most useful DSLs in Ruby rely heavily on
being able to do these overrides. I think D today is missing out
on a lot of those possibilities.
