On Friday, 12 July 2013 at 20:42:50 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
So I had an idea recently, wouldn't it be cool to have the
ability to call an executable at compile time and capture its
output. Something like the string imports but instead of
opening and reading a text file, it run an executable, waits
for it to finish, and grabs its output.
It would get really cool if you could pass this executable some
args and then mix in its out put into your own code. It could
be used similarly to how CTFE are used but with out the
overhead of trying to compile that function and what not and
with out the limitations on what it can do.
I could imagine all sorts of things that would be possible with
this that is currently not.
Not sure if this is something that could be implemented easily,
but seems like something that could be done and something that
would be really cool.
I personally think it's a *horrible* idea. It's one of those
things which looks good in small cases but doesn't scale.
Don't underestimate the fact that the compiler is a deterministic
program at present. When compiled with the same flags, on the
same set of source files, the results should always be the same.
It's a classic filter program.
input -> compiler -> output
Losing that purity is a HUGE thing to give up.
