Am Fri, 25 Jan 2013 21:38:44 -0800 schrieb Walter Bright <[email protected]>:
> On 1/25/2013 2:14 PM, Jonathan M Davis wrote: > > A property function is fundamentally different from a > > normal function by its very nature, not just by its call syntax. > > I would have agreed with you on that for years, simply taking its > veracity as an axiom, but lately I am not convinced at all of that > assertion. I suspect the differences between a property, field, and > method are purely contrivance. > > For example, even accessing a global variable isn't straightforward, > if you look under the hood. If it's in a DLL or TLS, there may be a > function call in there that is non-trivial. > Although variable access might be implemented as a non-trivial function calls everyone tries to make these as fast as possible. Think of PLT/GOT or the TLS register on ARM processors. And this is the difference between variable/property and function: Access to the former has to be 'fast'. There's no real definition of fast in this case, but I doubt an O(n^2) implementation of TLS or variable access in general would be acceptable to anyone.
