Nathan M. Swan wrote:
The constructor definition syntax doesn't seem to be an
improvement: this new instead of the old this.
well the reason they're named is because then you can multiple
constructors under different names:
class Model
{
string name;
float x = 0, y = 0;
this new(string n) {
name = n;
}
this new(string n, float x, float y) {
name = n;
this.x = x;
this.y = y;
}
this load(string fn) {
auto file = File.load(fn);
...
}
}
Here we have two overloads of the constructor new() without
conflict, but also two constructors that would have conflicted if
they weren't separated by name: new(string) and load(string).
In this situation today, we would normally need to make a static
factory function called 'load()' which created a 'new Model()'
and returned it. We do this factory function thing all the time
today, and it's required for things like Memory Pools and to
resolve naming conflicts like above. Ideally, there should be a
single, consistent way of creating objects which allow for
arbitrary named separation, and I think this is best solution.
Both Vala and Dart have a named-constructor syntax to address
this issue, but neither feels as consistent (to me) as what I'm
presenting above.
