Which language futures make D overcompicated?

2018-02-08 Thread Suliman via Digitalmars-d
I like D, but sometimes it's look like for me too complicated. Go 
have a lot of fans even it not simple, but primitive. But some D 
futures make it very hard to learning.


Small list by me:
1. mixins
2. inout
3. too many attributes like: @safe @system @nogc etc

Which language futures by your opinion make D harder?




Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Suliman via Digitalmars-d
- import ... really, we are 2018 and people are still wasting 
our time to have standard libraries as imports. Its even more 
fun when you split, only to need import the array library.


Please explain what do you mean by it?


Re: option -ignore_pure for temporary debugging (or how to wrap an unpure function inside a pure one)?

2018-02-08 Thread Timothee Cour via Digitalmars-d
just filed https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18407
Issue 18407 - debug should escape nothrow, @nogc, @safe (not just pure)

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 5:38 AM, Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d
 wrote:
> On 2/8/18 8:32 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>
>> On 2/7/18 10:32 PM, Timothee Cour wrote:
>>>
>>> same question with how to wrap a gc function inside a nogc shell, if
>>> not, allowing a flag -ignore_nogc that'd enable this (again, for
>>> debugging purposes)
>>
>>
>> If you wrap the call in a debug block, it will work.
>>
>> int foo() pure
>> {
>> debug writeln("yep, this works");
>> }
>
>
> Gah, I see this was answered 2 other times, but for some reason, your
> replies turn out as new threads.
>
> Sorry for the extra noise.
>
> -Steve


Re: proposal: heredoc comments to allow `+/` in comments, eg from urls or documented unittests

2018-02-08 Thread Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d

On 02/08/2018 10:06 PM, Timothee Cour wrote:


/"EOC
This is a multi-line
heredoc comment allowing
/+ documented unittests containing nesting comments +/


That shouldn't be an issue as long as you're using /++ doc comments and 
not /** ones. If it IS a problem, I'd regard it as a bug.


(If I were in change of the world, /** and /* both would be compiler 
errors, banned from all commits, and non-nesting block comments of all 
types would be prohibited from all langauges upon pain of...well, pain. 
They are spawn of satan and should never exist.)



and weird urls like https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/faq.html


*That* is a compelling point: Any embedded langauge (such as URL syntax) 
where +/ is valid. That, and maybe any code examples or discussions 
which, for any reason, intentially involve an unmatched end-of-comment.


Re: #dbugfix Issue 18068 - No file names and line numbers in stack trace

2018-02-08 Thread Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d

Hear, hear!

It *used* to work, but doesn't anymore. I may be wrong, but in 
Linux-land at least I think may be related to PIC. Seemed to work fine 
until I installed an updated distro that has issues with non-PIC stuff.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 23:27:25 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:55:09 UTC, JN wrote:
Citation needed on how garbage collection has been a smashing 
success based on its merits rather than the merits of the 
languages that use garbage collection.


Who cares? Even if the success isn't because of GC per se, the 
ubiquity of it in the real world means it certainly isn't a 
deal breaker.


GC is all about time/space tradeoffs. That's all one can say 
about it really.


Yes, the 'ubiquity of it in the real world' (in popular and not 
so popular languages) suggest that most accept this tradeoff, in 
favour of using GC.


But many still don't..

And many that do, might decide otherwise in the future... cause 
I'm not sure how well GC really scales...(in the future, the size 
of the heap might be terabytes..or more).


That's not an argument for not defaulting to GC in D.

It's an argument for when GC in D, could be a deal breaker.

So it's good thing for the D community to consider these people 
as well - rather than saying 'who cares'.


In the end, GC just adds to all the other bloat that's associated 
with programming in the modern era. The more we can reduce bloat, 
the -betterD.


I'm glad there is alot of research in this area, and increasingly 
so - that's really important, cause the story of automatic memory 
management is far from over - even in D it seems.




Re: #dbugfix Issue 1983

2018-02-08 Thread Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 07:26:55 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1983

A PR addressing this issue 
(https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/2130), is the oldest PR in 
the DMD repository.  The issue also is almost a decade old.  
I'd love to see it finally resolved.


Noted!


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 01:55:10 UTC, Benny wrote:


People talk about the need for a clear design focus, leadership 
and ... things go on as before. That is D in a nutshell. People 
doing what they want, whenever and things stay the same. New 
features ( that is always fun ), a few people doing to grunt 
work and all the rest comes down to people complaining because 
they see no reason to put effort into D, as it feels like a 
wast of time. << want to bet that this is the only thing people 
will quote, instead of the rest.




D does NOT need a top-down, authoritarian, corporation like 
vision imposed on it (which would solve all the issues you 
mention).


D is an open source, meritocratic community of people, who drive 
the project forward.


Some (like you apparently) seem to think that a lack of 
authoritarianism puts D at a disadvantage - I simply disagree.


It may mean, that (some)things progress more slowly, and the 
overall vision is less certain - but that's exactly how I like it.


D 'emerges' from its community. It's is not imposed on its 
community.




Re: proposal: heredoc comments to allow `+/` in comments, eg from urls or documented unittests

2018-02-08 Thread Timothee Cour via Digitalmars-d
NOTE:
the analog of documenting comments (/++ ...+/ and /** */) could be:

/""EOC
multiline comment
EOC"/

(ie allow both `/""` and `/"` before reading in the heredoc token)


On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 7:06 PM, Timothee Cour  wrote:
> same exact idea as motivation for delimited strings
> (https://dlang.org/spec/lex.html#delimited_strings)
>
> ```
>
> auto heredoc = q"EOS
> This is a multi-line
> heredoc string
> EOS"
> ;
>
> /"EOC
> This is a multi-line
> heredoc comment allowing
> /+ documented unittests containing nesting comments +/
> and weird urls like https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/faq.html
> EOS"/
>
> ```


Re: #dbugfix Issue 18068 - No file names and line numbers in stack trace

2018-02-08 Thread Mike Parker via Digitalmars-d

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 02:30:15 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18068


Noted!




proposal: heredoc comments to allow `+/` in comments, eg from urls or documented unittests

2018-02-08 Thread Timothee Cour via Digitalmars-d
same exact idea as motivation for delimited strings
(https://dlang.org/spec/lex.html#delimited_strings)

```

auto heredoc = q"EOS
This is a multi-line
heredoc string
EOS"
;

/"EOC
This is a multi-line
heredoc comment allowing
/+ documented unittests containing nesting comments +/
and weird urls like https://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/libstdc++/faq.html
EOS"/

```


Re: Somewhat OT: defining algebras in D

2018-02-08 Thread Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d

On 02/08/2018 04:37 PM, Amorphorious wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:23:05 UTC, Simen Kjærås wrote:
So I was bored in a meeting and decided to implement a generic 
template for defining complex numbers, dual numbers, quaternions and 
many other possible algebras by simply defining a set of rules and the 
components on which they act:


source:

https://gist.github.com/Biotronic/833680b37d4afe774c8562fd21554c6b



Cool. Took me a while to start to understand it and still not 100% 
grokked (partly because I've never quite been able to fully grasp 
quaternion math (at least, beyond Unity3D's ultra-easy abstraction for 
it) and never heard of dual numbers before), but staring at the complex 
number example helped see how this works. It's a very cool idea!


It would be nice if you learned how to document your code. It's not 
always easy for someone on the outside to be able to pick it up and it 
ultimately means your hard work will be less used as it could be. I know 
that sometimes comments can be redundant but it can also provide a 
better understanding.




Well, that's the difference between a formal library package release vs 
sharing a working proof of concept jotted down to pass time ;)


#dbugfix Issue 18068 - No file names and line numbers in stack trace

2018-02-08 Thread Mike Franklin via Digitalmars-d

https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18068

I tried to fix this one myself, but it beat me. It's also 
currently causing me friction when working on DMD.  I would love 
to see it fixed.


Interestingly, however, it works fine in the auto-tester.  But, 
problem can be reproduced at https://run.dlang.io/ (e.g. 
https://run.dlang.io/is/hatIXE).  Maybe it's dependent on the 
host compiler being used; I don't know.


Mike


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread rjframe via Digitalmars-d
On Thu, 08 Feb 2018 17:08:41 +, bachmeier wrote:

> On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:55:09 UTC, JN wrote:
> 
>> Python was also a smashing success, but it doesn't use a garbage
>> collector in it's default implementation (CPython).
> 
> I'm pretty sure CPython uses a mark-and-sweep GC together with reference
> counting.

It does. Originally it was reference-counting only, but they added the 
(generational) GC to clean up cyclic references. Because they do reference 
counting as well, you can disable the GC entirely.

https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/gc.html


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread psychoticRabbit via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:51:38 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:43:01 UTC, ixid wrote:
That's been said over and over and the message has not gotten 
through.


It is almost never said! We always play by their terms and 
implicitly concede by saying "but we can avoid it" or "look 
-betterC".


Reddit invades our space, and we fall back. Rust assimilates 
entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be 
drawn here! This far, no further!


"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die 
daily."

 - Napoleon 'D' Bonaparte

Hey... logo idea for Munich 2018 -> Dman wearing a Napoleon hat - 
and riding a horse.


Hey.. it's better than Dman lying on a death bed, dying of a 
stomach ulcer...


I think we should have an annual D parade too...bring out all the 
might of D's machinery..and show the world how powerful we really 
are.




Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, February 08, 2018 23:57:45 Rubn via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:06:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> > I.e. it isn't an issue of us D guys being dumb about the GC.
>
> So you could say it's a design flaw of D, attempting to use a GC
> where it isn't suited?

You could say that, but many of us would not agree. Just because certain
classes of GCs cannot be used with D does not mean that the fact that D has
a GC built-in is not beneficial and ultimately a good design decision.
Plenty of folks have been able to write very efficient code that uses D's
GC. Obviously, there are use cases where it's better to avoid the GC, but
for your average D program, the GC has been a fantastic asset.

- Jonathan M Davis



Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Benny via Digitalmars-d

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 00:08:56 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 23:50:29 UTC, Ali wrote:
But D, unlike many other languages, promotes itself as 
primarily a system programming language


I think that's a mistake too. I'd rebrand it as a "general 
purpose" programming language. One language you can use 
everywhere. It worked for node.js and electron...


Plenty of "general purpose" programming languages. The issue 
being that very few offer classes, no GC, easy syntax, good 
tooling and editor support, ...


I noticed a trend with languages with so many going to functional 
programming or semi-class based.


From the outside D looks good but there are so many strange 
things in the D design, that just infuriate.


- GC ... sure, if only it did not allocate so much on startup. It 
makes any other languages look better, by simply having a lower 
memory footprint on first comparison.  C 0.1MB, C++ 0.2MB, Rust 
0.4MB, D 1.4MB, ... Looks inefficient when its simply the whole 
1MB allocation. But perception matters!



- import ... really, we are 2018 and people are still wasting our 
time to have standard libraries as imports. Its even more fun 
when you split, only to need import the array library.


Look how ridiculous C++ like "import std.algorithm, std.conv, 
std.functional, std.math, std.regex, std.stdio;" some of the 
example on the front page look like.


I see people on Reddit sh*t all over PHP all the time and yet, 
its so darn easy and comfortable to not think about writing 
import all over the code, just to get default functionality!! 
Reddit is full of people who love to hate languages that simply 
work.



- Tooling. I will say it again and again until i die, it simply 
sucks for Windows users.


How fun is it to see dcd-server taking up between 90 to 120MB and 
seeing 10, 12, 15 instances loading into memory eating away 2GB 
memory.


Or seeing VSC work with some of the plugins for 5 minutes and 
then break again, forcing you to constantly restart VSC. Or how 
competing languages seem to provide more cleaner and better 
working plugins, with cleaner tool tips ( source documentation )


- Even the example on the front page are so typical "scare away 
the newbies". It looks like a cleaner version of C++.



D has always been a love/hate relationship for me. One can see 
the work that has gone into it but it feels like a Frankenstein's 
monster. Small details, big details, the lack of clear focus.


BetterC just moves resources away from actually implementing a 
permanent solution. Instead of maintain one system, you deal with 
two. While default D still deals with regressions and issue, 
BetterC being incomplete is pushed as the next big thing.


The library has design choices that date back a long time and 
nobody dares to touch. The whole constant GC debate is linked to 
those design choices. D can do a lot but the layer between both 
is so thin that at times you wonder if your dealing with compile 
or runtime features. CTFE or not. Talking about CTFE .. Stephan 
vanished for a long time busy with work and yet it feels reading 
the topics that very few people noticed him missing, despite 
working a year on the whole new CTFE engine. Not exactly 
motivating for people.


I can talk until i turn blue. I already wrote "a wall of text" as 
some say, in the Go topic and that was not even technical issues.


People talk about the need for a clear design focus, leadership 
and ... things go on as before. That is D in a nutshell. People 
doing what they want, whenever and things stay the same. New 
features ( that is always fun ), a few people doing to grunt work 
and all the rest comes down to people complaining because they 
see no reason to put effort into D, as it feels like a wast of 
time. << want to bet that this is the only thing people will 
quote, instead of the rest.


But on-topic again:

No GC, yay. Always a win because it makes a language stand out. 
Possible for D. NO! Too much design choices that limit the 
language. Another D3 rewrite will simply kill D.


D is so tiring. Its the main reason for going with Go, simply 
tired of waiting. In this one+ year time watching D, i have seen 
blogs, betterC half finished being promoted when D is already 
overloaded with features and has already a higher learning curve. 
More regressions and bug fix releases because the new features 
keep breaking stuff. Some more examples on the front pages. Some 
nice external packages that only limited amount of people care 
about. And very few things to improving the issues people 
mentioned the year before and the year before and the year before.


So again, why do people need to bother? The momentum D build up 
in 2016, seem to according tiobe really lost. I remember D 
hitting (23) 1% a year ago, now its ranking (29) 0.5%.


Great another wall of text at 2.50 in the morning. Frankly, i can 
write a book about D issues, justified or not. It will probably 
read like gibberish a

Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Mike Franklin via Digitalmars-d

On Friday, 9 February 2018 at 01:31:41 UTC, Mike Franklin wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 17:10:00 UTC, bachmeier wrote:


What are D's limitations on do-it-yourself reference counting?


 * Types that are built into the language like dynamic arrays, 
associative arrays, and exceptions won't benefit from DIY 
reference counting.
 * Much of Phobos probably wouldn't be compatible with DIY 
reference counting.


That being said, there may be a way to override some runtime 
hooks like _d_newclass 
(https://dlang.org/library/rt/lifetime/_d_newclass.html), 
etc... to make it work.  But I haven't tried.


Also, I think Walter is currently working on getting reference 
counted exceptions into the language:  
https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/1995


Mike


Also, I think DIY reference counting is already done for us in 
the automem library 
https://dlang.org/blog/2017/04/28/automem-hands-free-raii-for-d/


Mike



Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Mike Franklin via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 17:10:00 UTC, bachmeier wrote:


What are D's limitations on do-it-yourself reference counting?


 * Types that are built into the language like dynamic arrays, 
associative arrays, and exceptions won't benefit from DIY 
reference counting.
 * Much of Phobos probably wouldn't be compatible with DIY 
reference counting.


That being said, there may be a way to override some runtime 
hooks like _d_newclass 
(https://dlang.org/library/rt/lifetime/_d_newclass.html), etc... 
to make it work.  But I haven't tried.


Also, I think Walter is currently working on getting reference 
counted exceptions into the language:  
https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/1995


Mike


Re: Bye bye, fast compilation times

2018-02-08 Thread Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d

On 02/08/2018 06:21 AM, Martin Tschierschke wrote:


Beginner question:
How to split my project, to compile the regex part separately as a lib 
and just link them?




Unfortunately that depends completely on what buildsystem you're using. 
But if you're just calling the compiler directly, then it's really easy:


> dmd -lib -of=myLib.a [all other flags your project may need] 
fileYouWantInLib.d anyOtherFileYouAlsoWant.d


> dmd myLib.a [your project's usual flags, and all the rest of your .d 
files]


If on windows, then just replace ".a" with ".lib".


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 23:50:29 UTC, Ali wrote:
But D, unlike many other languages, promotes itself as 
primarily a system programming language


I think that's a mistake too. I'd rebrand it as a "general 
purpose" programming language. One language you can use 
everywhere. It worked for node.js and electron...


Though, of course, the GC is NOT a problem for those systems 
tasks. Even in the niches where it doesn't help, it doesn't 
actually hurt either. (in fact, the bigger problem we have in 
those niches are obligatory typeinfo generation and unnecessary 
bloat in the runtime implementation issues that Mike Franklin 
has made big progress on fixing already. and even those can be 
worked around, doing a serious system implementation is a bigger 
task than stubbing out a few functions.)



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_programming_language


A few of those languages have GCs... and GC languages have been 
used for all these tasks before. It's not a dealbreaker.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 17:32:53 UTC, ixid wrote:
Do you really think sticking with the current course on GC 
would gain more users than very slightly changing tack and 
making it something you add to a simpler base? I think the 
second of those will gain more users.


No, the current course - which IS the optional GC story you're 
talking about - is not good. I'm saying change course by 
embracing our advantages instead of constantly playing defense.


D isn't going to beat Rust on compiler-enforced memory safety, so 
we shouldn't even play that game. Instead, pound them into the 
ground with our programmer productivity package. Destroy them 
with our familiar syntax that programmers already know.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Rubn via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:06:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

I.e. it isn't an issue of us D guys being dumb about the GC.


So you could say it's a design flaw of D, attempting to use a GC 
where it isn't suited?


If going malloc didnt lose you a bunch of features and bring a 
bunch of other stuff you need to be careful of, that might be 
a good argument too.


With @nogc, you don't have to be careful about it. The compiler 
will let you know.


@nogc has issues integrating with features like delegates, but no 
one seems to care about that with statements like this. It's more 
convenient to not use @nogc than dealing with the hassles of 
using it.




Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Ali via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 23:27:25 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:55:09 UTC, JN wrote:
Citation needed on how garbage collection has been a smashing 
success based on its merits rather than the merits of the 
languages that use garbage collection.


Who cares? Even if the success isn't because of GC per se, the 
ubiquity of it in the real world means it certainly isn't a 
deal breaker.


But D, unlike many other languages, promotes itself as primarily 
a system programming language


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_programming_language

So I would say yes, D's success does depend in a very large part 
on the Garbage Collector, and managing a system resources




Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 16:40:46 UTC, John Gabriele wrote:
Regarding what you said about the implementation of the GC 
following in the footsteps of industry giants, what 
specifically about D's GC impl is patterned after other 
industry giant's GC's?


The simple fact that it is a GC. These debates aren't about 
technical details. You don't see the reddit detractors actually 
arguing implementation details - they just equate GC with bad.


But GC isn't bad. GC is used by virtually everyone, to big 
productivity and memory safety gains by most, and evidently, 
without seriously getting in the way by the majority of the 
remainder just like how D's specialized users who can't 
afford GC still manage to use D.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:55:09 UTC, JN wrote:
Citation needed on how garbage collection has been a smashing 
success based on its merits rather than the merits of the 
languages that use garbage collection.


Who cares? Even if the success isn't because of GC per se, the 
ubiquity of it in the real world means it certainly isn't a deal 
breaker.


Re: Somewhat OT: defining algebras in D

2018-02-08 Thread Amorphorious via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:23:05 UTC, Simen Kjærås wrote:
So I was bored in a meeting and decided to implement a generic 
template for defining complex numbers, dual numbers, 
quaternions and many other possible algebras by simply defining 
a set of rules and the components on which they act:



alias quaternion = Algebra!(
float,
"1,i,j,k",
op("1", any)  = any,
op("i,j,k", self) = "-1",
op("i", "j")  = "k".antiCommutative,
op("j", "k")  = "i".antiCommutative,
op("k", "i")  = "j".antiCommutative,
);

source:

https://gist.github.com/Biotronic/833680b37d4afe774c8562fd21554c6b

--
  Simen


It would be nice if you learned how to document your code. It's 
not always easy for someone on the outside to be able to pick it 
up and it ultimately means your hard work will be less used as it 
could be. I know that sometimes comments can be redundant but it 
can also provide a better understanding.


For example, it seems that you are using a group presentation to 
define the a algebra... but a few examples are not enough to 
provide a complete context in what it can be used for besides the 
example. This requires understanding the details in detail, which 
can be too time consuming for some. For example, can it be used 
to define an algebra on sets? If not, could it be modified to do 
so easily? To answer that one probably has to know how the code 
works in detail... which means spending time, which then goes to 
if it is worth it over a new implementation, etc.






Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 11:51 AM, bachmeier wrote:
The developers working on .NET had the opportunity to learn from Java, yet they 
went with GC.[0] Anyone that says one approach is objectively better than the 
other is clearly not familiar with all the arguments - or more likely, believes 
their problem is the only real programming problem.


[0] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/brada/2005/02/11/resource-management/


That really is an informative article, thanks. The only issue with it is that it 
doesn't cover the newer C++ ref counting model, which has proved popular.


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 10:42 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

On 2/8/18 1:25 PM, Walter Bright wrote:
"abc" is an array (it's an immutable(char)[]). There's no reason why 
['a','b','c'] should be different than "abc" (other than the hidden null 
character, which is irrelevant here).


['a','b','c'] is mutable, a string literal is immutable.


Perhaps the fact that using a string rather than an array causes code to fail 
should be addressed?


That would be a language change proposal or bug report. By all means, please do 
so.


How can this be a huge simplification? I mean you already have code that parses 
hex characters in a string array, all you need is one flag that assumes all 
character pairs have been preceded by \x. I think this will save probably 4 or 5 
lines of code?


hexStringConstant() was 79 lines of code, not including comments and blank 
lines.

I also showed how:

   x"deadbeef"

can be replaced with:

   hexString!"deadbeef"

with no overhead. If you hate typing hexString, you can always write:

   alias x = hexstring;

and then you've got:

   x"deadbeef"
   x!"deadbeef"

which seems an inconsequential difference. (The generated code is the same.)


It also doesn't preclude at all someone writing library code to make their own 
custom string syntax.


You're right it doesn't. But people don't do it, because it is neither obvious 
that D can do such a thing (it relies on a combination of features) nor is it 
obvious how to do it correctly (as the earlier hexString implementation shows 
and nobody seemed able to fix it but me). What Phobos provides is working, 
professional quality code that should serve as a user resource for "how to do 
things and how to do them right".


I.e. having hexString as a library function is a good advertisement for what D 
can do. After all, how many languages can do this sort of thing?


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Paulo Pinto via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:06:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/8/2018 9:03 AM, Dave Jones wrote:
If D had a decent garbage collector it might be a more 
convincing argument.


'Decent' GC systems rely on the compiler emitting "write gates" 
around every assignment to a pointer. These are justified in 
languages like Java and Go for which everything is GC 
allocated, but they would be a performance disaster for a 
hybrid language like D.


More precise GC exacts heavy runtime penalties, too, which is 
why attempts to add them to D have had mixed results.


I.e. it isn't an issue of us D guys being dumb about the GC.

If going malloc didnt lose you a bunch of features and bring a 
bunch of other stuff you need to be careful of, that might be 
a good argument too.


With @nogc, you don't have to be careful about it. The compiler 
will let you know.


.NET, Eiffel, Modula-3 and the various Oberon variants are all 
examples where not everything is GC allocated.


C# 8.0 with .NET Native is getting the features I mostly cared 
from D.




Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, February 08, 2018 11:28:52 H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 12:17:06PM -0700, Jonathan M Davis via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
> > On Thursday, February 08, 2018 14:54:19 Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d
>
> > wrote:
> [...]
>
> > > Garbage collection has proved to be a smashing success in the
> > > industry, providing productivity and memory-safety to programmers of
> > > all skill levels. D's GC implementation follows in the footsteps of
> > > industry giants without compromising expert's ability to tweak even
> > > further.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > That's what we should be saying every single time someone mentions
> > > GC. Including it was the RIGHT DECISION and we should own that.
> >
> > +1000
>
> [...]
>
> /// ditto. :-P
>
> While I agree that we *should* make D as usable as possible for those
> who don't want to use the GC, all too often that belies the benefits
> that having a GC actually brings.  It's true that the current GC could
> be improved, and that we could reduce GC-dependence in Phobos, provide
> better @nogc support, etc.. But we should not apologize for *having* a
> GC, as if it was somehow a wrong decision.
>
> I think it's *great* to have a GC.  It has saved me *so* much time,
> energy, and frustration that would have been spent obsessing over memory
> management every other line of code I write; now I can instead direct
> that energy towards actually solving stuff in the problem domain that is
> the entire purpose of the code in the first place.  And for those times
> when performance is an issue, GC.disable and GC.collect have proven
> sufficient to clear the bottleneck in 95% of the cases. And besides, D
> doesn't stop you from dropping back to malloc/free if you really need
> to. Or, for that matter, RefCounted.

I am completely fine with making more features pay-as-you-go so long as it
doesn't require me to change any existing code (e.g. I shouldn't have to
import the GC - but if no code in your program invokes the GC and that
results in the GC not being linked in, that's fine with me). But whenever I
see folks trying to push -betterC as the way to go or push to get the GC out
of Phobos, I start getting worried about that negatively affecting normal D
code. I totally agree that there are times when you don't want something on
the GC heap, and there are times when you need to do stuff like
reference-counting (e.g. for OS-level resources that need to be released
deterministically), but on the whole, having the GC is fantastic, and for
most stuff, it works wonderfully.

We should strive to minimize the cost of nice stuff like the GC so that it's
as much pay-as-you-go as is reasonable, but at some point, if you're not
careful, you start losing out on nice features in your attempt to appease
the folks who think that they can't afford the GC in their enivornment
(whether they actually can or not). And I would much rather see folks have
to go to a bit of extra work to turn off something that most programs are
going to benefit from than to make it harder for your average D program to
take advantage of all of D's great features.

- Jonathan M Davis



Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Ola Fosheim Grøstad via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 19:51:05 UTC, bachmeier wrote:
The developers working on .NET had the opportunity to learn 
from Java, yet they went with GC.[0] Anyone that says one 
approach is objectively better than the other is clearly not 
familiar with all the arguments - or more likely, believes 
their problem is the only real programming problem.


Reference counting isn't a general solution, and it is very slow 
when you allow flexible programming paradigms that generate lots 
of objects.


So, it all depends on how much flexibility you want to allow for 
your programmers and still having reasonable performance.


(The vast majority of high level programming languages use GC and 
has done so since the 60s.)




Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread bachmeier via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 19:34:20 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/8/2018 10:11 AM, JN wrote:
I agree, however these languages would probably have been 
successful even without GC, using e.g. some form of automatic 
reference counting.


If reference counting would work with Java, and was better, 
wouldn't the Java developers have done it decades ago?


The developers working on .NET had the opportunity to learn from 
Java, yet they went with GC.[0] Anyone that says one approach is 
objectively better than the other is clearly not familiar with 
all the arguments - or more likely, believes their problem is the 
only real programming problem.


[0] 
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/brada/2005/02/11/resource-management/


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d
On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 12:17:06PM -0700, Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Thursday, February 08, 2018 14:54:19 Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d 
> wrote:
[...]
> > Garbage collection has proved to be a smashing success in the
> > industry, providing productivity and memory-safety to programmers of
> > all skill levels. D's GC implementation follows in the footsteps of
> > industry giants without compromising expert's ability to tweak even
> > further.
> >
> >
> >
> > That's what we should be saying every single time someone mentions
> > GC. Including it was the RIGHT DECISION and we should own that.
> 
> +1000
[...]

/// ditto. :-P

While I agree that we *should* make D as usable as possible for those
who don't want to use the GC, all too often that belies the benefits
that having a GC actually brings.  It's true that the current GC could
be improved, and that we could reduce GC-dependence in Phobos, provide
better @nogc support, etc.. But we should not apologize for *having* a
GC, as if it was somehow a wrong decision.

I think it's *great* to have a GC.  It has saved me *so* much time,
energy, and frustration that would have been spent obsessing over memory
management every other line of code I write; now I can instead direct
that energy towards actually solving stuff in the problem domain that is
the entire purpose of the code in the first place.  And for those times
when performance is an issue, GC.disable and GC.collect have proven
sufficient to clear the bottleneck in 95% of the cases. And besides, D
doesn't stop you from dropping back to malloc/free if you really need
to. Or, for that matter, RefCounted.


T

-- 
If you want to solve a problem, you need to address its root cause, not just 
its symptoms. Otherwise it's like treating cancer with Tylenol...


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 10:49 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

On 2/8/18 1:42 PM, Ralph Doncaster wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:31:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

db    0ffdeh,0ffadh,0ffbeh,0ffefh    ;

But it looks like they are all dchar, so 4x the space vs x"deadbeef"?


The 'db' means 'define byte'. dw for words, dd for 32 bit words.

I was looking at that too when I was testing the differences, but actually, it's 
the same when you use x"deadbeef".


Yes.


I wonder if it's an issue with how obj2asm prints it out? Surely, that data 
array must be contiguous, and they must be bytes. Otherwise the resulting code 
would be wrong.


Yes. I just never bothered to fix it.



Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 10:11 AM, JN wrote:
I agree, however these languages would probably have been successful even 
without GC, using e.g. some form of automatic reference counting.


If reference counting would work with Java, and was better, wouldn't the Java 
developers have done it decades ago?


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Jonathan M Davis via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, February 08, 2018 14:54:19 Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d 
wrote:
> On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:
> > It feels like D has not overcome at least two major issues in
> > the public mind, the built-in GC
>
> D is a pragmatic language aimed toward writing fast code, fast.
> Garbage collection has proved to be a smashing success in the
> industry, providing productivity and memory-safety to programmers
> of all skill levels. D's GC implementation follows in the
> footsteps of industry giants without compromising expert's
> ability to tweak even further.
>
>
>
> That's what we should be saying every single time someone
> mentions GC. Including it was the RIGHT DECISION and we should
> own that.

+1000

- Jonathan M Davis



Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Ralph Doncaster via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:49:51 UTC, Steven 
Schveighoffer wrote:
I wonder if it's an issue with how obj2asm prints it out? 
Surely, that data array must be contiguous, and they must be 
bytes. Otherwise the resulting code would be wrong.


OK.  I didn't even know about obj2asm until you mentioned it.  
objdump seems to work perfectly fine on the .o's that dmd 
generates, and I can tell that x"deadbeef" generates 4 contiguous 
bytes (objdump -D):


Disassembly of section .rodata.str1.1:

 <_TMP0>:
   0:   de  .byte 0xde
   1:   ad  lods   %ds:(%rsi),%eax
   2:   be  .byte 0xbe
   3:   ef  out%eax,(%dx)
...



Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread jmh530 via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:06:38 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

[snip]

More precise GC exacts heavy runtime penalties, too, which is 
why attempts to add them to D have had mixed results.





See, there's your problem right there. Now if you replace the 
current GC with the slowest possible GC you can think of and then 
replace that with a precise GC. Then all the comparisons are 
gonna come out roses. /s


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/18 1:42 PM, Ralph Doncaster wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:31:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/8/2018 5:26 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
The extra data in the object file comes from the inclusion of the 
hexStringImpl function, and from the template parameter (the symbol 
_D3std4conv__T9hexStringVAyaa8_6465616462656566ZQBiyAa is in there as 
well, which will always be larger than the actual string passed to 
hexString).


I also see the data in there twice for some reason.


This is no longer the case with the PR.

  import std.conv;

  void test() {
    __gshared immutable char[4] s = hexString!"deadbeef";
  }

produces the following, with no sign of the template and the data is 
there only once:


_DATA    segment
_D5test24testFZ1syG4a:
db    0ffdeh,0ffadh,0ffbeh,0ffefh    ;
_DATA    ends


But it looks like they are all dchar, so 4x the space vs x"deadbeef"?


I was looking at that too when I was testing the differences, but 
actually, it's the same when you use x"deadbeef".


I wonder if it's an issue with how obj2asm prints it out? Surely, that 
data array must be contiguous, and they must be bytes. Otherwise the 
resulting code would be wrong.


-Steve


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/18 1:25 PM, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/8/2018 7:07 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
My concern in the hexString case is the sheer requirement of CTFE for 
something that is so easy to do in the compiler, already *done* in the 
compiler, and has another form specifically for hex strings (the 
"\xde\xad\xbe\xef" form) that isn't going away. It makes me laugh 
actually that Walter is now replacing the implementation with a mixin 
of that other form, incurring all the cost of CTFE so you can 
transform the string, while breaking existing code in the process: 
https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/6138


The breakage was due to the original implementation of hexString not 
producing a string literal like "abc", but producing an array literal 
like ['a', 'b', 'c'], which was not what the documentation said it did. 
And naturally, some uses wound up relying on the array behavior.


"abc" is an array (it's an immutable(char)[]). There's no reason why 
['a','b','c'] should be different than "abc" (other than the hidden null 
character, which is irrelevant here).


Perhaps the fact that using a string rather than an array causes code to 
fail should be addressed?




What the PR does is fix hexString so that hexString!"deadbeef" rewrites 
it to the string literal "\xde\xad\xbe\xef". It's classic "lowering". 
Isn't it amazing that D can even do this?


It's great that D has this power, and would be really useful if D's 
language didn't already have a way to do this in a builtin way.


Simplifying the compiler and pushing things off into the library makes 
the compiler and spec smaller and less buggy. It also has the nice 
feature of providing a simple path for anyone who wants to write their 
own custom string syntax, such as EBCDIC string literals (!).


How can this be a huge simplification? I mean you already have code that 
parses hex characters in a string array, all you need is one flag that 
assumes all character pairs have been preceded by \x. I think this will 
save probably 4 or 5 lines of code?


It also doesn't preclude at all someone writing library code to make 
their own custom string syntax.


-Steve


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Ralph Doncaster via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:31:06 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/8/2018 5:26 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
The extra data in the object file comes from the inclusion of 
the hexStringImpl function, and from the template parameter 
(the symbol 
_D3std4conv__T9hexStringVAyaa8_6465616462656566ZQBiyAa is in 
there as well, which will always be larger than the actual 
string passed to hexString).


I also see the data in there twice for some reason.


This is no longer the case with the PR.

  import std.conv;

  void test() {
__gshared immutable char[4] s = hexString!"deadbeef";
  }

produces the following, with no sign of the template and the 
data is there only once:


_DATA   segment
_D5test24testFZ1syG4a:
db  0ffdeh,0ffadh,0ffbeh,0ffefh ;
_DATA   ends


But it looks like they are all dchar, so 4x the space vs 
x"deadbeef"?


Re: My choice to pick Go over D ( and Rust ), mostly non-technical

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/6/2018 1:51 AM, Atila Neves wrote:
I tried Warp on a non-trivial C codebase. It didn't work (by which I mean the 
code wouldn't compile with it). I don't know how clang managed to build a (for 
all practical purposes I can see) bug-compatible preprocessor from scratch to 
gcc, but it did and in large projects it makes a difference.


Warp successfully compiles all of Boost, including their advanced preprocessor 
metaprogramming library. So it's very, very compatible. If you have something 
that didn't work, I suspect it is because the user-defined list of predefined 
macros supplied to Warp wasn't correct.


If that wasn't it, I'd appreciate it if you could boil down what went wrong.


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 5:26 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
The extra data in the object file comes from the inclusion of the hexStringImpl 
function, and from the template parameter (the symbol 
_D3std4conv__T9hexStringVAyaa8_6465616462656566ZQBiyAa is in there as well, 
which will always be larger than the actual string passed to hexString).


I also see the data in there twice for some reason.


This is no longer the case with the PR.

  import std.conv;

  void test() {
__gshared immutable char[4] s = hexString!"deadbeef";
  }

produces the following, with no sign of the template and the data is there only 
once:


_TEXT   segment dword use32 public 'CODE'   ;size is 0
_TEXT   ends
_DATA   segment para use32 public 'DATA';size is 4
_DATA   ends
CONST   segment para use32 public 'CONST'   ;size is 14
CONST   ends
_BSSsegment para use32 public 'BSS' ;size is 0
_BSSends
FLATgroup   
extrn   _D5test24testFZv

public  _D5test24testFZ1syG4a
FMB segment dword use32 public 'DATA'   ;size is 0
FMB ends
FM  segment dword use32 public 'DATA'   ;size is 4
FM  ends
FME segment dword use32 public 'DATA'   ;size is 0
FME ends

public  _D5test212__ModuleInfoZ
_D5test24testFZvCOMDAT flags=x0 attr=x0 align=x0

_TEXT   segment
assume  CS:_TEXT
_TEXT   ends
_DATA   segment
_D5test24testFZ1syG4a:
db  0ffdeh,0ffadh,0ffbeh,0ffefh ;
_DATA   ends
CONST   segment
_D5test212__ModuleInfoZ:
db  004h,010h,000h,000h,000h,000h,000h,000h ;
db  074h,065h,073h,074h,032h,000h   ;test2.
CONST   ends
_BSSsegment
_BSSends
FMB segment
FMB ends
FM  segment
dd  offset FLAT:_D5test212__ModuleInfoZ
FM  ends
FME segment
FME ends
_D5test24testFZvcomdat
assume  CS:_D5test24testFZv
ret
_D5test24testFZvends
end





Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 7:07 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
My concern in the hexString case is the sheer requirement of CTFE for something 
that is so easy to do in the compiler, already *done* in the compiler, and has 
another form specifically for hex strings (the "\xde\xad\xbe\xef" form) that 
isn't going away. It makes me laugh actually that Walter is now replacing the 
implementation with a mixin of that other form, incurring all the cost of CTFE 
so you can transform the string, while breaking existing code in the process: 
https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/6138


The breakage was due to the original implementation of hexString not producing a 
string literal like "abc", but producing an array literal like ['a', 'b', 'c'], 
which was not what the documentation said it did. And naturally, some uses wound 
up relying on the array behavior.


What the PR does is fix hexString so that hexString!"deadbeef" rewrites it to 
the string literal "\xde\xad\xbe\xef". It's classic "lowering". Isn't it amazing 
that D can even do this?


Simplifying the compiler and pushing things off into the library makes the 
compiler and spec smaller and less buggy. It also has the nice feature of 
providing a simple path for anyone who wants to write their own custom string 
syntax, such as EBCDIC string literals (!).


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread JN via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 18:08:59 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/8/2018 7:55 AM, JN wrote:
Citation needed on how garbage collection has been a smashing 
success based on its merits rather than the merits of the 
languages that use garbage collection.


You can't separate the two. The Java and Go language semantics 
are designed around the GC.


I agree, however these languages would probably have been 
successful even without GC, using e.g. some form of automatic 
reference counting.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 7:55 AM, JN wrote:
Citation needed on how garbage collection has been a smashing success based on 
its merits rather than the merits of the languages that use garbage collection. 


You can't separate the two. The Java and Go language semantics are designed 
around the GC.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Walter Bright via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/2018 9:03 AM, Dave Jones wrote:

If D had a decent garbage collector it might be a more convincing argument.


'Decent' GC systems rely on the compiler emitting "write gates" around every 
assignment to a pointer. These are justified in languages like Java and Go for 
which everything is GC allocated, but they would be a performance disaster for a 
hybrid language like D.


More precise GC exacts heavy runtime penalties, too, which is why attempts to 
add them to D have had mixed results.


I.e. it isn't an issue of us D guys being dumb about the GC.

If going malloc didnt lose you a bunch of features and bring a bunch of other stuff 
you need to be careful of, that might be a good argument too.


With @nogc, you don't have to be careful about it. The compiler will let you 
know.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Arun Chandrasekaran via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:40:44 UTC, Seb wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:

[...]


https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/2057


[...]


One of Andrei's student is working on this.
I think she has been focusing on templated ==, <= and AAs so 
far and is now recently getting more into the GC business:


[...]


Accompanied by a root cause analysis and learning how/why these 
were implemented at first place that prompts a D2 -> D3 and how 
to avoid such mistakes again so that D3 -> D4 is not required. :)


Just saying, techies can exhibit some managerial traits as well.


Re: My choice to pick Go over D ( and Rust ), mostly non-technical

2018-02-08 Thread Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 17:24:31 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:59:28 UTC, Nicholas Wilson 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 15:16:46 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 15:10:36 UTC, Ralph 
Doncaster wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 08:05:46 UTC, Nicholas 
Wilson wrote:

For OpenCL I develop and maintain DCompute:
http://code.dlang.org/packages/dcompute
https://github.com/libmir/dcompute

It has a much beautified interface to OpenCL (and is mostly 
consistent with its CUDA interface). You can also write 
kernels directly in D, however this requires that LDC is 
built against my fork of LLVM: 
https://github.com/thewilsonator/llvm


It's still in dev but should be usable. Please let me know 
if you have issues using it.


I saw your library before, but it looked like it is ONLY for 
native D on GPUs.  I looked at it again, and don't see any 
documentation or example showing that it works with standard 
OpenCL kernels written in C.


Yeah its a wrapper for OpenCL so as long as the names and 
signatures of the symbols match it should work.


OK, maybe I'll take a closer look.

p.s. since you seem to be a green team guy, you might not 
know that llvm optimization sucks on AMD.  I use -legacy when 
building my kernels to get the good old compiler.


"green team guy"?

It that with the OpenCL C compiler?


nVidia's logo is green, while AMD's logo is often red.


Ah, I have no affiliation with any of the hardware vendors. The 
only reason DCompute supports CUDA is LLVM has a backend for it 
and I thought "it can't be too hard". I test (not nearly as 
frequently as I should) on a rather old  Intel CPU and very old 
(CC2.1) Nvidia card, simply due to availability (i.e. I had them 
before I started). CI Testing is on my list of things to do but I 
just haven't got around to it yet.


On Linux with AMDGPU-Pro 17 and up, the driver uses 
llvm/amdgpu.  The driver still has the old gcc-based? compiler.
 The old compiler can be selected with clBuildProgram using the 
option "-legacy".


Unfortunately I can't help much there but I should definitely 
test (and optimise) with AMD.
Hopefully it catches up with the legacy one because DCompute is 
currently tied to LDC and hence LLVM. The mainlining of polly, 
region vectoriser and VPlan should boost perf all round.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread ixid via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:51:38 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:43:01 UTC, ixid wrote:
That's been said over and over and the message has not gotten 
through.


It is almost never said! We always play by their terms and 
implicitly concede by saying "but we can avoid it" or "look 
-betterC".


Reddit invades our space, and we fall back. Rust assimilates 
entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be 
drawn here! This far, no further!


You're preaching to the choir here. Being able to add GC easily 
to a betterC base gives you the same utility and a much stronger 
story to tell people, optional GC sounds good.


Do you really think sticking with the current course on GC would 
gain more users than very slightly changing tack and making it 
something you add to a simpler base? I think the second of those 
will gain more users.


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Ralph Doncaster via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 17:06:55 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 08:26:03AM -0500, Steven Schveighoffer 
via Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]
The extra data in the object file comes from the inclusion of 
the hexStringImpl function, and from the template parameter 
(the symbol 
_D3std4conv__T9hexStringVAyaa8_6465616462656566ZQBiyAa is in 
there as well, which will always be larger than the actual 
string passed to hexString).

[...]

This is one area that really should be improved.  Is there some 
easy way in the compiler to mark a template function as "only 
used in CTFE", and not emit it into the object file if there 
are no other runtime references to it?  I'm thinking of some 
kind of boolean attribute that defaults to false, and gets set 
if the function is referenced by runtime code.  During codegen, 
any function that doesn't have this attribute set will be 
skipped over.


My speculation is that this would lead to a good amount of 
reduction in template bloat, given how pervasively CTFE is used 
in Phobos (and idiomatic D in general).


Or maybe you can get away with just using a good compiler/linker 
that supports LTO.  It's quite mature in GCC now, so it's 
probably worth trying with GDC.

http://hubicka.blogspot.ca/2014/04/linktime-optimization-in-gcc-1-brief.html



Re: My choice to pick Go over D ( and Rust ), mostly non-technical

2018-02-08 Thread Ralph Doncaster via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:59:28 UTC, Nicholas Wilson 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 15:16:46 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 15:10:36 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 08:05:46 UTC, Nicholas 
Wilson wrote:

For OpenCL I develop and maintain DCompute:
http://code.dlang.org/packages/dcompute
https://github.com/libmir/dcompute

It has a much beautified interface to OpenCL (and is mostly 
consistent with its CUDA interface). You can also write 
kernels directly in D, however this requires that LDC is 
built against my fork of LLVM: 
https://github.com/thewilsonator/llvm


It's still in dev but should be usable. Please let me know 
if you have issues using it.


I saw your library before, but it looked like it is ONLY for 
native D on GPUs.  I looked at it again, and don't see any 
documentation or example showing that it works with standard 
OpenCL kernels written in C.


Yeah its a wrapper for OpenCL so as long as the names and 
signatures of the symbols match it should work.


OK, maybe I'll take a closer look.

p.s. since you seem to be a green team guy, you might not know 
that llvm optimization sucks on AMD.  I use -legacy when 
building my kernels to get the good old compiler.


"green team guy"?

It that with the OpenCL C compiler?


nVidia's logo is green, while AMD's logo is often red.
On Linux with AMDGPU-Pro 17 and up, the driver uses llvm/amdgpu.  
The driver still has the old gcc-based? compiler.  The old 
compiler can be selected with clBuildProgram using the option 
"-legacy".





Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d
On Thu, Feb 08, 2018 at 08:26:03AM -0500, Steven Schveighoffer via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> The extra data in the object file comes from the inclusion of the
> hexStringImpl function, and from the template parameter (the symbol
> _D3std4conv__T9hexStringVAyaa8_6465616462656566ZQBiyAa is in there as
> well, which will always be larger than the actual string passed to
> hexString).
[...]

This is one area that really should be improved.  Is there some easy way
in the compiler to mark a template function as "only used in CTFE", and
not emit it into the object file if there are no other runtime
references to it?  I'm thinking of some kind of boolean attribute that
defaults to false, and gets set if the function is referenced by runtime
code.  During codegen, any function that doesn't have this attribute set
will be skipped over.

My speculation is that this would lead to a good amount of reduction in
template bloat, given how pervasively CTFE is used in Phobos (and
idiomatic D in general).


T

-- 
He who does not appreciate the beauty of language is not worthy to bemoan its 
flaws.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread bachmeier via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:55:09 UTC, JN wrote:

Python was also a smashing success, but it doesn't use a 
garbage collector in it's default implementation (CPython).


I'm pretty sure CPython uses a mark-and-sweep GC together with 
reference counting.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread bachmeier via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 17:03:58 UTC, Dave Jones wrote:
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 14:56:31 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:

ooh better last sentence


D's GC implementation follows in the footsteps of industry 
giants without compromising experts' ability to realize 
maximum potential from the machine.


If D had a decent garbage collector it might be a more 
convincing argument. If going malloc didnt lose you a bunch of 
features and bring a bunch of other stuff you need to be 
careful of, that might be a good argument too.


I mean a good quality GC and seamless integration of manual 
memory management would be a pretty good argument to make, but 
D has neither of those ATM.


What are D's limitations on do-it-yourself reference counting?


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Dave Jones via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 14:56:31 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

ooh better last sentence


D's GC implementation follows in the footsteps of industry 
giants without compromising experts' ability to realize maximum 
potential from the machine.


If D had a decent garbage collector it might be a more convincing 
argument. If going malloc didnt lose you a bunch of features and 
bring a bunch of other stuff you need to be careful of, that 
might be a good argument too.


I mean a good quality GC and seamless integration of manual 
memory management would be a pretty good argument to make, but D 
has neither of those ATM.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Michael via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 14:54:19 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:
It feels like D has not overcome at least two major issues in 
the public mind, the built-in GC


D is a pragmatic language aimed toward writing fast code, fast. 
Garbage collection has proved to be a smashing success in the 
industry, providing productivity and memory-safety to 
programmers of all skill levels. D's GC implementation follows 
in the footsteps of industry giants without compromising 
expert's ability to tweak even further.




That's what we should be saying every single time someone 
mentions GC. Including it was the RIGHT DECISION and we should 
own that.


Yes, absolutely! It's the reason I chose to start writing 
programs in D, because I had a background in C and Java, and 
wanted a fast, compiled language that would take care of the 
details for me. You can write programs quickly, and it's quick 
enough when running them, and can of course be tuned further 
through managing allocations/collections of the GC etc.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread John Gabriele via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:51:38 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:43:01 UTC, ixid wrote:
That's been said over and over and the message has not gotten 
through.


It is almost never said! We always play by their terms and 
implicitly concede by saying "but we can avoid it" or "look 
-betterC".


Reddit invades our space, and we fall back. Rust assimilates 
entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be 
drawn here! This far, no further!


Woot! Love it. :) Will save that quote you provided to use 
elsewhere. Thanks.


Regarding what you said about the implementation of the GC 
following in the footsteps of industry giants, what specifically 
about D's GC impl is patterned after other industry giant's GC's?




Re: My choice to pick Go over D ( and Rust ), mostly non-technical

2018-02-08 Thread Nicholas Wilson via Digitalmars-d
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 15:16:46 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 15:10:36 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 08:05:46 UTC, Nicholas Wilson 
wrote:

For OpenCL I develop and maintain DCompute:
http://code.dlang.org/packages/dcompute
https://github.com/libmir/dcompute

It has a much beautified interface to OpenCL (and is mostly 
consistent with its CUDA interface). You can also write 
kernels directly in D, however this requires that LDC is 
built against my fork of LLVM: 
https://github.com/thewilsonator/llvm


It's still in dev but should be usable. Please let me know if 
you have issues using it.


I saw your library before, but it looked like it is ONLY for 
native D on GPUs.  I looked at it again, and don't see any 
documentation or example showing that it works with standard 
OpenCL kernels written in C.


Yeah its a wrapper for OpenCL so as long as the names and 
signatures of the symbols match it should work.


p.s. since you seem to be a green team guy, you might not know 
that llvm optimization sucks on AMD.  I use -legacy when 
building my kernels to get the good old compiler.


"green team guy"?

It that with the OpenCL C compiler? DCompute goes through SPIR-V 
for OpenCL (although it would be nice to support SPIR. 
Unfortunately the official version SPIR 2.0 is based of is not 
supported by LDC), I dont know if this makes a difference.
It would be nice to eventually support AMDGCN et. al. at some 
point but I don't have the time at the moment.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread JN via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 14:54:19 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
Garbage collection has proved to be a smashing success in the 
industry, providing productivity and memory-safety to 
programmers of all skill levels.


Citation needed on how garbage collection has been a smashing 
success based on its merits rather than the merits of the 
languages that use garbage collection. Python was also a smashing 
success, but it doesn't use a garbage collector in it's default 
implementation (CPython). Unless you mean garbage collection as 
in "not manual memory management"? But that still might not be as 
simple, because RAII would fall somewhere inbetween.




Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

2018-02-08 Thread Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:29:08 UTC, Ralph Doncaster 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:31:58 UTC, John Gabriele 
wrote:
I'm not sure how long dub has been around, but having an easy 
to use CPAN-alike (online module repo) is HUGE. Dub is great 
for sales. The better dub and the repo gets, the more 
attractive D gets.


I completely agree that the availability of libraries is a huge 
factor.  I almost gave up on D because of the limited amount of 
3rd party libs.

I think just improving the search function would help.
http://code.dlang.org/search?q=keccak
Comes up with nothing, so I started porting a sha3/keccak lib 
from C to D.  Then someone pointed out botan has sha3 support, 
which can be found if you search for "crypto"

http://code.dlang.org/search?q=crypto

The opposite situation you may see, when searching for mysql:

You will get 9 packages listed. Which should I take?
If you click on everyone, you will realize, that some of them are 
forks of other.
And the version number of mysql-native at the top, just recently 
increased so strong, that it makes a different.
The minimum additional information which should be listed - I 
think - is the number of downloads and GitHub stars.


I know that there is work behind the scene to find some kind of 
weighted sort, this would be cool, but just displaying the GitHub 
voting might help a lot.








Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 15:43:01 UTC, ixid wrote:
That's been said over and over and the message has not gotten 
through.


It is almost never said! We always play by their terms and 
implicitly concede by saying "but we can avoid it" or "look 
-betterC".


Reddit invades our space, and we fall back. Rust assimilates 
entire worlds, and we fall back. Not again! The line must be 
drawn here! This far, no further!


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread ixid via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 14:56:31 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

ooh better last sentence


D's GC implementation follows in the footsteps of industry 
giants without compromising experts' ability to realize maximum 
potential from the machine.


That's been said over and over and the message has not gotten 
through. With a pay for what you use approach the GC is just as 
available as it is now, and yes, I completely agree it's very 
useful and that the reaction to it is ludicrous. This is an 
illogical argument that we've lost so needs a new approach.


Re: Quora: Why hasn't D started to replace C++?

2018-02-08 Thread Ralph Doncaster via Digitalmars-d
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:31:58 UTC, John Gabriele 
wrote:
I'm not sure how long dub has been around, but having an easy 
to use CPAN-alike (online module repo) is HUGE. Dub is great 
for sales. The better dub and the repo gets, the more 
attractive D gets.


I completely agree that the availability of libraries is a huge 
factor.  I almost gave up on D because of the limited amount of 
3rd party libs.

I think just improving the search function would help.
http://code.dlang.org/search?q=keccak
Comes up with nothing, so I started porting a sha3/keccak lib 
from C to D.  Then someone pointed out botan has sha3 support, 
which can be found if you search for "crypto"

http://code.dlang.org/search?q=crypto



Somewhat OT: defining algebras in D

2018-02-08 Thread Simen Kjærås via Digitalmars-d
So I was bored in a meeting and decided to implement a generic 
template for defining complex numbers, dual numbers, quaternions 
and many other possible algebras by simply defining a set of 
rules and the components on which they act:



alias quaternion = Algebra!(
float,
"1,i,j,k",
op("1", any)  = any,
op("i,j,k", self) = "-1",
op("i", "j")  = "k".antiCommutative,
op("j", "k")  = "i".antiCommutative,
op("k", "i")  = "j".antiCommutative,
);

source:

https://gist.github.com/Biotronic/833680b37d4afe774c8562fd21554c6b

--
  Simen


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/18 9:44 AM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 13:06:44 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
So you think it should go into druntime? I don't see why it wasn't in 
there in the first place to be honest.


Yeah, probably. I might even publically import it when you import the 
posix header so it just works in the most common place.


Of course, it is important then that the compile-time thing doesn't 
cause a link time error when you just import and don't compile it in 
but that should be the case anyway (and the other posts in this thread 
show Walter is working on that so yay)



If you could have imported std.conv in druntime, it would have been done.


That's my point. We keep clashing despite being on the same side!


Your statement before: "it is 0o100 vs import std.conv" and "That is why 
it isn't used in druntime" I thought it meant there was some sort of 
decision made to not use the import because it would be too costly. But 
really, there was no decision to be made.


Sorry about the misunderstanding!

When I say the import is the problem, I don't mean the syntax or literal 
line of code. I mean the whole concept of depending on the Phobos module 
and all the stuff that brings. druntime can't have that dependency. 
Neither can a few other specialized low-level cases. And specialized 
low-level cases are where you find 95% of octal literals. (well ok 50% 
of octal literals, where the other 50% are bugs cuz someone wrote 010 to 
line up leading zeros... )


I agree, you could implement the octal template in druntime without too 
much issue. The octal!"100" would have been easy-to-parse, the octal!100 
version would be more difficult, but nothing impossible that requires 
the whole of phobos to do so.


My concern in the hexString case is the sheer requirement of CTFE for 
something that is so easy to do in the compiler, already *done* in the 
compiler, and has another form specifically for hex strings (the 
"\xde\xad\xbe\xef" form) that isn't going away. It makes me laugh 
actually that Walter is now replacing the implementation with a mixin of 
that other form, incurring all the cost of CTFE so you can transform the 
string, while breaking existing code in the process: 
https://github.com/dlang/phobos/pull/6138


-Steve


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

ooh better last sentence


D's GC implementation follows in the footsteps of industry giants 
without compromising experts' ability to realize maximum 
potential from the machine.


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:
It feels like D has not overcome at least two major issues in 
the public mind, the built-in GC


D is a pragmatic language aimed toward writing fast code, fast. 
Garbage collection has proved to be a smashing success in the 
industry, providing productivity and memory-safety to programmers 
of all skill levels. D's GC implementation follows in the 
footsteps of industry giants without compromising expert's 
ability to tweak even further.




That's what we should be saying every single time someone 
mentions GC. Including it was the RIGHT DECISION and we should 
own that.


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 13:06:44 UTC, Steven 
Schveighoffer wrote:
So you think it should go into druntime? I don't see why it 
wasn't in there in the first place to be honest.


Yeah, probably. I might even publically import it when you import 
the posix header so it just works in the most common place.


Of course, it is important then that the compile-time thing 
doesn't cause a link time error when you just import and don't 
compile it in but that should be the case anyway (and the 
other posts in this thread show Walter is working on that so yay)


If you could have imported std.conv in druntime, it would have 
been done.


That's my point. We keep clashing despite being on the same side!

When I say the import is the problem, I don't mean the syntax or 
literal line of code. I mean the whole concept of depending on 
the Phobos module and all the stuff that brings. druntime can't 
have that dependency. Neither can a few other specialized 
low-level cases. And specialized low-level cases are where you 
find 95% of octal literals. (well ok 50% of octal literals, where 
the other 50% are bugs cuz someone wrote 010 to line up leading 
zeros... )


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Adam D. Ruppe via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 10:52:35 UTC, Kagamin wrote:

Or have a function specifically for unix permissions, like
int unix(int r, int w, int x, int gr, int gw, int gx, int ur, 
int uw, int ux);

It might be even more readable.


I actually personally prefer binary: 0b_1_111_101_000 which 
visually corresponds with ls's output: drwxr-xr-x.


But octal is the way they are usually done in C. The comments in 
druntime are because that had to be translated from the common 
convention.


Re: option -ignore_pure for temporary debugging (or how to wrap an unpure function inside a pure one)?

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/18 8:32 AM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:

On 2/7/18 10:32 PM, Timothee Cour wrote:

same question with how to wrap a gc function inside a nogc shell, if
not, allowing a flag -ignore_nogc that'd enable this (again, for
debugging purposes)


If you wrap the call in a debug block, it will work.

int foo() pure
{
    debug writeln("yep, this works");
}


Gah, I see this was answered 2 other times, but for some reason, your 
replies turn out as new threads.


Sorry for the extra noise.

-Steve


Re: option -ignore_pure for temporary debugging (or how to wrap an unpure function inside a pure one)?

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/7/18 10:32 PM, Timothee Cour wrote:

same question with how to wrap a gc function inside a nogc shell, if
not, allowing a flag -ignore_nogc that'd enable this (again, for
debugging purposes)


If you wrap the call in a debug block, it will work.

int foo() pure
{
   debug writeln("yep, this works");
}

-Steve


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/8/18 1:10 AM, Walter Bright wrote:

On 2/7/2018 9:45 PM, Ralph Doncaster wrote:
 > While the fix is a huge improvement, it doesn't match the code 
generated by the hex literals.  hexString!"deadbeef" stores the 
null-terminated string in the data section of the object file, while 
x"deadbeef" only stores 4 bytes in the data section.


   string s = x"deadbeef";

stores a null terminated string, too.

If you want only 4 bytes,

   __gshared immutable char[4] = hexString!"deadbeef";

just as you'd do for any string literal.


The extra data in the object file comes from the inclusion of the 
hexStringImpl function, and from the template parameter (the symbol 
_D3std4conv__T9hexStringVAyaa8_6465616462656566ZQBiyAa is in there as 
well, which will always be larger than the actual string passed to 
hexString).


I also see the data in there twice for some reason.

-Steve


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Steven Schveighoffer via Digitalmars-d

On 2/7/18 3:24 PM, Adam D. Ruppe wrote:

On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 18:59:38 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
Not even close. Octal literals are a disaster, because putting a 
leading 0 should never change the base of a number.


I agree the leading 0 is terrible. But that's not the real question 
here: it is 0o100 vs import std.conv. Note it isn't the syntax - 
octal!100 is quite nice to me - but rather the requirement to import.


That is why it isn't used in druntime... and low level code interfacing 
with external OS or hardware APIs are the most common place for octal, 
and also where we can't use it. I fear hex will fall into the same pit.


So you think it should go into druntime? I don't see why it wasn't in 
there in the first place to be honest.


But there is no "decision" on whether to import or not, it's not 
possible in druntime to import from phobos. So saying the lack of use of 
octal in druntime is somehow a detraction on the import is incorrect. If 
you could have imported std.conv in druntime, it would have been done.



This has its own problems (e.g. 0O)


That's why I specifically wrote `0o`. I wouldn't allow `0O`, just like D 
doesn't allow `1l`: "Error: lower case integer suffix 'l' is not 
allowed. Please use 'L' instead"


I'm still not in love with the little-o syntax, but this definitely 
would be necessary.


The difference for me isn't how the problem is solved, but that there 
was a problem for octals (error prone sinister errors) but there 
isn't/wasn't one for hex strings.


You and I are on the same side :) I also think they should stay (I just 
want to see them retyped as immutable(ubyte)[] instead of 
immutable(char)[], we always cast anyway).


To me, it is a shortcut for specifying hex for every character. The cast 
isn't that horrible, and probably can be abstracted away into a function 
if you want.


-Steve


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Mike Franklin via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:
How difficult would it be for D at this point to move towards a 
pay for what you use system that out of the box is betterC and 
requires the garbage collector to be explicitly imported?


I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I've been 
trying to work on something like that, and have successfully 
submitted a few PRs:


Opt-in ModuleInfo
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7395
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7768

Opt-in Throwable
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7786

Opt-in TypeInfo
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7799 (not yet merged; someone 
please review it)


With all of the above PRs merged, the compiler will no longer 
complain about the above missing runtime features if your code 
doesn't use them.  It also allows one to create really small 
binaries with no dependencies.


Example 1
=

object.d

module object;

private alias extern(C) int function(char[][] args) MainFunc;
private extern (C) int _d_run_main(int argc, char** argv, 
MainFunc mainFunc)

{
return mainFunc(null);
}

main.d
--
void main() { }

dmd -conf= -defaultlib= main.d object.d -of=main
size main
   textdata bss dec hex filename
   1403 584  162003 7d3 main


Example 2
This will avoid linking in the C standard library and C runtime.  
But you have to provide your own replacements.

=

object.d

module object;

extern(C) void __d_sys_exit(long arg1)
{
asm
{
mov RAX, 60;
mov RDI, arg1;
syscall;
}
}

extern void main();
private extern(C) void _start()
{
main();
__d_sys_exit(0);
}

main.d
--
void main() { }


dmd -c -lib main.d object.d -of=main.o
ld main.o -o main
size main
   textdata bss dec hex filename
 56   0   0  56  38 main

If you are creating a library to be consumed by another language, 
you just need to add an empty object.d file in your current 
directory.  I tried to remove that silly limitation, but it met 
resistance: https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7825


I have a changelog PR describing all this at 
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7829, with the intention of it 
being available in the next DMD release, but I need my other PRs 
reviewed and merged before I can move forward.


This is just the tip of the iceberg, though.  After this stage, I 
would like to start tackling the overuse of TypeInfo in the 
coupling between the compiler and the runtime.  See this comment 
(https://issues.dlang.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18312#c2) for more 
about what I mean there.


Mike


Re: Heads-up: upcoming instabilities in std.experimental.allocator, and what to do

2018-02-08 Thread Nathan S. via Digitalmars-d
On Thursday, 30 November 2017 at 19:01:02 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

So we may switch to ubyte[]


Hooray!


Re: A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread Seb via Digitalmars-d

On Thursday, 8 February 2018 at 11:06:15 UTC, ixid wrote:
How difficult would it be for D at this point to move towards a 
pay for what you use system that out of the box is betterC and 
requires the garbage collector to be explicitly imported?


https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pull/2057

It feels like D has not overcome at least two major issues in 
the public mind, the built-in GC and, more ludicrously, the D1 
library split. Would there not be significant value in making 
this a D3 transition? As non-breaking as possible but moving 
the run time elements into libraries


One of Andrei's student is working on this.
I think she has been focusing on templated ==, <= and AAs so far 
and is now recently getting more into the GC business:


https://github.com/dlang/druntime/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+author%3Asomzzz

and potentially taking the opportunity to invert the defaults 
for things like safe and pure.


I think someone (Petar?) is working on a DIP for package-wide 
defaults.

The idea is simple, you tell the compiler once:

"Hey yo, listen up. I know that old code still needs to XXX (e.g. 
@system by default), but don't be a bad boy and let me opt-in 
into the cool new stuff by default, please"


I don't recall the exact details though.
Ideally it's like the -std=c++11 flag, i.e. you set it once in 
your dub.sdl and don't have to think about it again.


The story of this D3 transition to the public would then 
address the 'issues' head on, creating an easily conveyable 
story that these have been resolved. This appears to be the 
level on which a lot of language adoption works, at least 
between hearing about and trying a language. At the moment it's 
painful to see the endless criticisms of the GC and library 
split crop up whenever D is discussed. D is progressing 
technically but needs a 'story'.


I don't think D3 is going to happen anytime soon (except someone 
forks the language).
Breaking changes are only done for critical things, e.g. when the 
compiler learns to detect new errors in your code.
Regarding the 'story', there's e.g. the excellent GC Series now 
(https://dlang.org/blog/the-gc-series) and things are moving 
forward though of course PR has always been one of D's weakest 
points.


---

Though if there's ever a D3, my list of things to be addressed is 
big


- no auto-decoding
- fix shared
- attribute bloat
- wrong defaults (e.g. @safe or final by default)
- C behavior without compiler warnings
- tuples (though it looks like they can be retro-actively added 
now that the use of the return of the comma operator is finally 
gone)

- Redesign Phobos with @nogc in mind
- remove the bloat from Phobos
- std.io (with streams)
- proper naming and structuring in Phobos (e.g. why is 
doesPointTo or RangePrimitive in std.exception), or "hello 
super-messy std.traits"

...

Some of these actually can be fixed with little or no breakage, 
but for most - if addressed - hell would break loose.


Re: Bye bye, fast compilation times

2018-02-08 Thread H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d
On Wed, Feb 07, 2018 at 10:59:51PM -0500, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
[...]
> On 02/06/2018 08:47 PM, jmh530 wrote:
> > 
> > Would it help to take the approach of mir, i.e. putting
> > version(mir_test) before all the unittests?
> 
> That used to be a very common idiom. (And I agree with Jonathan M
> Davis: it's a STRONG sign the current design needs fixed). But newer
> versions of dub, intelligently, will only compile the files in the
> main project with -unittest, which solves the problem...*for dub
> users*. Unfortunately, this means that the idiom above has become less
> common and libraries have become less usable for anyone using a build
> tool *other* than dub. :(

Actually, it does *not* solve the problem for dub users.  Compiling with
-unittest causes unittests for imported modules to be instantiated too.
(Otherwise, Phobos unittests wouldn't show up in a -unittest build since
we never compile Phobos modules directly in a user project!)


T

-- 
ASCII stupid question, getty stupid ANSI.


Re: Bye bye, fast compilation times

2018-02-08 Thread Martin Tschierschke via Digitalmars-d

On Monday, 5 February 2018 at 21:27:57 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
One of my D projects for the past while has been taking 
unusually long times to compile.  This morning, I finally 
decided to sit down and figure out exactly why. What I found 
was rather disturbing:


--
import std.regex;
void main() {
auto re = regex(``);
}
--

Compile command: time dmd -c test.d

Output:
--
real0m3.113s
user0m2.884s
sys 0m0.226s
--

Comment out the call to `regex()`, and I get:

--
real0m0.285s
user0m0.262s
sys 0m0.023s
--

Clearly, something is wrong if the mere act of compiling a 
regex causes a 4-line program to take *3 seconds* to compile, 
where normally dmd takes less than a second.



Thank you for this finding!

I was wondering why my little vibe.d project started to take 
approximately twice the
time to compile, and because of making a mistake in my test 
setup, even my minimal
program still included the file containing the regex. So that 
even reducing the used
code to a minimum the compilation time was ~7 sec compared to 
less than 4 seconds.


Would be cool if we could get fast compilation of regex.

I am coming from using scripting languages (perl and ruby) using 
regex a lot, so that this is really disappointing for me.


Beginner question:
How to split my project, to compile the regex part separately as 
a lib and just link them?




A betterC base

2018-02-08 Thread ixid via Digitalmars-d
How difficult would it be for D at this point to move towards a 
pay for what you use system that out of the box is betterC and 
requires the garbage collector to be explicitly imported?


It feels like D has not overcome at least two major issues in the 
public mind, the built-in GC and, more ludicrously, the D1 
library split. Would there not be significant value in making 
this a D3 transition? As non-breaking as possible but moving the 
run time elements into libraries and potentially taking the 
opportunity to invert the defaults for things like safe and pure.


The story of this D3 transition to the public would then address 
the 'issues' head on, creating an easily conveyable story that 
these have been resolved. This appears to be the level on which a 
lot of language adoption works, at least between hearing about 
and trying a language. At the moment it's painful to see the 
endless criticisms of the GC and library split crop up whenever D 
is discussed. D is progressing technically but needs a 'story'.


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d

Or have a function specifically for unix permissions, like
int unix(int r, int w, int x, int gr, int gw, int gx, int ur, int 
uw, int ux);

It might be even more readable.


Re: missing HexString documentation

2018-02-08 Thread Kagamin via Digitalmars-d
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 17:01:54 UTC, Adam D. Ruppe 
wrote:

http://dpldocs.info/experimental-docs/source/core.sys.posix.fcntl.d.html#L123

   version (X86)
{
enum O_CREAT= 0x40; // octal 0100
enum O_EXCL = 0x80; // octal 0200
enum O_NOCTTY   = 0x100;// octal 0400
enum O_TRUNC= 0x200;// octal01000


Dunno, hex reads better here. Octal is only good for unix 
permissions which are grouped by 3 bits, which is not the case 
for io constants - these are usual ungrouped flags that are 
always done with hex and are easier to understand in hex. If 
you're desperate, octal can be also written as (1<<6)|(2<<3)|(4).


Re: Heads-up: upcoming instabilities in std.experimental.allocator, and what to do

2018-02-08 Thread Seb via Digitalmars-d

On Friday, 1 December 2017 at 02:30:29 UTC, Seb wrote:
On Thursday, 30 November 2017 at 19:01:02 UTC, Andrei 
Alexandrescu wrote:

Hi all,


Eduard, Alexandru Jercaianu and I are working on improving 
allocators' design and implementation. This entails a few 
breaking changes.


In order to make matters easier for code using allocators, 
Sebastian Wilzbach created a dub package freezing the existing 
API: http://code.dlang.org/packages/stdx-allocator. Please use 
that until we work the kinks out of allocators - great things 
are coming! - and after that feel free to upgrade code to use 
the new and improved allocators.


I just pushed a couple of fixes [1] for older Phobos versions 
and stdx-allocator now works down until 2.072.2.
If someone needs an older Phobos version to work with 
stdx-allocator, please let me know.

Also switching to stdx-allocator is rather easy, e.g.:

```
sed -i "s/std[.]experimental/stdx/g" **/*.d
```

[1] 
https://github.com/wilzbach/stdx-allocator/commit/d06e4f2bae2eee5d380d145221ecb9cab04c90d7



Just a friendly reminder to people that experimental isn't 
expected to be stable.
2.079 will come with this change, switch to stdx-allocator 
package if you prefer stability. stdx-allocator provides the 
current code and works down until 2.072.


https://dlang.org/changelog/pending.html#std-experimental-allocator-rciallocator
https://code.dlang.org/packages/stdx-allocator

Also note that only vibe.d ~>= 0.8.3-alpha.1 and vibe-core ~>= 
1.4.0-alpha.1 use this package.
(though while most projects have been upgraded manually, I hope 
that we can get a new release of Vibe.d out there soon to avoid 
any issues - see [1]).


[1] https://github.com/vibe-d/vibe.d/issues/2058


Re: Status status = __traits(compilesReportError, {string b=10; }) => status.msg=Error: cannot....

2018-02-08 Thread Atila Neves via Digitalmars-d
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 20:29:44 UTC, Timothee Cour 
wrote:
is there any way to get error from speculative execution 
(`__traits(
compiles, ...)`)? would be useful in tests; If not currently 
how hard

would that be to implement? eg:

```

struct Status{bool ok; string msg;}

Status status = __traits(compilesReportError, {string b=10;})
assert(!status.ok);
assert(status.msg==`main.d(15) Error: cannot implicitly convert
expression 10 of type int to string`);
```


static if(!__traits(compiles, $CODE)) {
$CODE
}

It's the same technique I use in concepts to produce an error 
message if a struct you wanted to be, say isInputRange, isn't:


https://github.com/atilaneves/concepts

Atila


Re: Bye bye, fast compilation times

2018-02-08 Thread Stefan Koch via Digitalmars-d
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:00:48 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 09:27:47 UTC, Stefan Koch 
wrote:
Another Thing that can be done is reviewing the code and 
alerting me to potential problems. i.e. Missing or 
indecipherable comments as well as spelling mistakes.
(with the correction please (just telling me something is 
wrong, will not help since I obliviously don't know how to 
spell it))


What is the preferred place for this? 
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7073 or do you want PRs 
against a fork of yours?

Corrected link:
https://github.com/UplinkCoder/dmd/tree/newCTFE_reboot


Re: Bye bye, fast compilation times

2018-02-08 Thread Stefan Koch via Digitalmars-d
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 22:00:48 UTC, Bastiaan Veelo 
wrote:
On Wednesday, 7 February 2018 at 09:27:47 UTC, Stefan Koch 
wrote:
Another Thing that can be done is reviewing the code and 
alerting me to potential problems. i.e. Missing or 
indecipherable comments as well as spelling mistakes.
(with the correction please (just telling me something is 
wrong, will not help since I obliviously don't know how to 
spell it))


What is the preferred place for this? 
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/pull/7073 or do you want PRs 
against a fork of yours?


I'd prefer a pr against 
https://github.com/UplinkCoder/dmd/newCTFE_reboot