On 1/10/13 4:21 PM, Rob T wrote:
I was wondering the same thing: Why do AA's have to be built directly
into the language rather than implemented within the standard library?
AA's may be nice to have, but are they really all that fundamental? For
example, everyone uses strings, but I suspect not everyone will use AA's.
It could however be that some fundamental constructs in the D language
make use of the built in AA's (tuples?), so if that is the case I can
understand why they would be built in, but I do not know if this is the
case or not.
The only distinguishing feature is literal syntax. Everything else is a
mistake in language design or an insufficiency in the state of the art.
On a side note, I'm wondering if this may be a way that can help decide
what should or should not be made a built in component of the language,
i.e, If the language itself can make good use of the feature internally,
then it's a good candidate for being built in, but if not, then it's a
good candidate for being left out and instead implemented in the std lib
or elsewhere.
Long discussion. Very long.
Andrei
