On Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:54:28 +0400, Andrei Alexandrescu
<[email protected]> wrote:
Consider:
class Apple {}
class Orange {}
void main() {
writeln(new Apple == new Orange);
}
This program always prints "false". By and large, it is odd that one
would attempt comparison between unrelated classes. I was thinking, is
this ever legitimate, or we should just disallow it statically whenever
possible?
The comparison would still remain possible by casting to a parent class:
writeln(cast(Object) new Apple == cast(Object) new Orange);
I could think of rare cases in which one would want two sibling types to
compare equal. Consider:
class Matrix { ... }
// No state added, operations optimized with BLAS
class BLASMatrix : Matrix {}
// No state added, operations optimized with LAPACK
class LAPACKMatrix : Matrix {}
Since neither derived class adds any state, both act in comparisons just
like the base class Matrix, so it's valid to compare a BLASMatrix with a
LAPACKMatrix.
How do you think we should go about this? Stay error-prone for the
benefit of a few cases, or disallow sibling class comparisons statically?
Andrei
I believe Java and C# took bool Object.equals(Object other); way because
they lacked generics intially and stored all the instances as Objects in
containers (having equals method in Object allowed them proper ordering
etc).
D doesn't suffer from that problem and doesn't have to follow the same way
those languages took.
BTW, nowadays, they define IComparable<T> interface, which is a
recommended way to implement comparison functions.
That's why I'm all for removing opEquals from Object.
