I think it's better to give a concrete example rather than
explaining this vaguely.
- For those who are familiar with LDC internals:
I want to create something like LOG_SCOPE. You can skip the
explanation.
- For those who are not:
Imagine that you want to track down how deep in the call stack
you are,
so that you can print nice log messages.
That is, if you have:
func3() {
debug_log("message in func3");
}
func2() {
debug_log("message in func2");
func3();
debug_log("message in func2");
}
func1() {
func2();
}
main() {
func1();
}
In this case, I'd like to have something like this:
* * message in func 2
* * * message in func3
* * message in func2
So, we could create a global variable CALL_DEPTH or smth, and in
every
function right at the beginning, do: CALL_DEPTH += 1;
and in the end: CALL_DEPTH -= 1;
And then implement debug_log as (skipping the printf-like things
etc.):
for (int i = 0; i != CALL_DEPTH; ++i)
printf("* ");
But the thing is, now we have to put the += and -= in every
function,
when it is really common in all of them and there's no reason to
be visible
anyway.
LDC does something that IMO is ingenious. It's something like
(it's C++):
#define LOG_SCOPE LoggerObj _logscope;
But LoggerObj has a constructor that does the += and the
destructor that does
-=. So, you can put just one line of:
LOG_SCOPE;
at any point inside a function and the desired thing is done
almost invisibly.
-- The question --
Can we do better ? For one, I believe that because D does not
have a preprocessor,
we have to do an actual declaration which would be somewhat more
verbose.
Or do a mixin that does it. mixin can help as it can be more
complicated
and also we can access local scope (although I don't think this
is a good idea).
But in both cases, they're not totally invisible.
Can we do something like: func1, func2 and func3, when they enter
do the X
and when they return, they do the Y.
Thanks,
Stefanos