Re: In the new D release why use free functions instead of properties?

[Idan Arye via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Monday, 18 August 2014 at 21:17:11 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Monday, 18 August 2014 at 21:02:09 UTC, Gary Willoughby 
wrote:
In the new D release there have been some changes regarding 
built-in types.

http://dlang.org/changelog.html?2.066#array_and_aa_changes

I would like to learn why this has been done like this and why 
it is desired to be free functions rather than properties?

Probably because they never should have been properties in the 
first place. Properties are supposed to emulate variables, 
whereas something like dup is clearly an action. So, it's 
clearly not supposed to be a property. However, because D 
doesn't require parens on a function with no arguments, you can 
still call it without parens. Some of the changes probably also 
help with cleaning up the AA internals, which is sorely needed.

- Jonathan M Davis

Also std.algorithm's heavy usage of passing delegates as template 
arguments makes it more elegant to use free functions:

    import std.algorithm;
    import std.compiler;

    void main()
    {
        int[][] arr=[[1,2],[3,4]];
        static if (version_minor<=65){
            auto arr2=arr.map!(a => a.dup)();
        }else{
            auto arr2=arr.map!(a.dup)();
        }
        arr2[0][0]=9;
        assert(arr2[0][0] == 1);
    }