On 27 August 2012 07:52, Walter Bright <newshou...@digitalmars.com> wrote:
> On 8/26/2012 9:25 PM, Chris Cain wrote: > >> On Monday, 27 August 2012 at 04:01:10 UTC, Walter Bright wrote: >> >>> What happens with the name mangling? What about overloading? template >>> type >>> deduction? type specialization? type equivalence? type covariance? >>> >> >> Name mangling: Without knowing enough about compiler making, I'm not sure >> why it >> matters. I couldn't answer, sorry. >> > > The mangled names have a 1:1 correspondence with types. A mangled name > can, for example, be reversed into a type. > > If default args form part of the type, then they'll have to be mangled in, > too. This causes a rather long list of substantial problems. > This sounds like an implementation detail/dmd quirk is defining the language spec... I generally agree with the usage proposal above, it should be metadata that doesn't affect type equivalence (although I'd probably expect is(f1 == f2def) should be true rather than false). If that info needs to be mangled into the name to reproduce the type later, fine, is that a problem? Perhaps stick it at the end of the mangled name in a new metadata suffix that is truncated prior to any comparisons for equality? This actually rather relates to the attribute/annotation proposals/conversations we were having some time back. If this is addressed, then it may enable attributes too.
