On Sun, 02 Aug 2009 03:43:43 -0400, Walter Bright
<[email protected]> wrote:
Having optional parentheses does lead to unresolvable ambiguities. How
much of a problem that really is is debatable, but let's assume it
should be resolved. To resolve it, a property must be distinguishable
from a regular function.
One way is to simply add a "property" attribute keyword:
property bool empty() { ... }
property void empty(bool b) { ... }
The problem is that:
1. there are a lot of keywords already
2. keywords are global things
The alternative is to have a unique syntax for properties. Ideally, the
syntax should be intuitive and mimic its use. After much fiddling, and
based on n.g. suggestions, Andrei and I penciled in:
bool empty { ... }
void empty=(bool b) { ... }
The only problem is when a declaration but not definition is desired:
bool empty;
but oops! That defines a field. So we came up with essentially a hack:
bool empty{}
i.e. the {} means the getter is declared, but defined elsewhere.
What do you think?
I stated it elsewhere, but I'll bring it up to the front.
I don't think the getter syntax is viable without parentheses, since that
precludes array properties, e.g.:
string asUpper(string s);
usage:
string s = "abcde".asUpper;
It wouldn't be possible to define this as a property using your syntax,
unless you want to introduce a syntax for extending types...
-Steve
