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
Actually, the new free functions *are* properties. All that you
just declared is valid, but we never got around to doing it.
Walter (If I remember correctly) was opposed.
So right now, even if "dup" is a free function, "myArray.dup()"
is still invalid.
:(
