On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 16:38:02 UTC, Max Samukha wrote:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 14:58:55 UTC, Andrew Godfrey wrote:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 06:31:01 UTC, Max Samukha wrote:
On Saturday, 9 July 2016 at 04:32:25 UTC, Andrew Godfrey
wrote:
This is a tangent from the subject of this thread, but: No,
that just says how it is implemented, not what it means /
intends. See "the 7 stages of naming", here:
http://arlobelshee.com/good-naming-is-a-process-not-a-single-step/
(That resource is talking about identifier naming, not
keywords. But it applies anyway.)
You have a point, but the name is still not 'just bonkers', all
things considered. Metonymy is justified in many cases, and I
think this is one of them. What better name would you propose?
First, I'm not proposing a change to existing keywords, I'm using
existing examples to talk about future language changes. Second,
I had to look up "metonymy" in Wikipedia. Using its example:
Suppose "Hollywood" referred to both the LA movie industry and,
say, the jewelry industry; that's roughly equivalent to the
pattern I'm talking about.
Others in this thread have suggested alternatives, many of those
have things to criticize, but I would prefer something cryptic
over something that has multiple subtly-different meanings in the
language.
I'm drawn to "#if", except people might end up thinking D has a
macro preprocessor. "ifct" seems fine except I'm not sure
everyone would agree how to pronounce it. Compile-time context
seems significant enough that maybe it warrants punctuation, like
"*if" or "$if".
I especially want to establish: If we were adding a new feature
as significant as "static if", and we decided a keyword was
better than punctuation, could we stomach the cost of making a
new keyword, or would we shoehorn it either into one of the
existing keywords unused in that context, or start talking about
using attributes? I have a lot of experience with
backward-compatibility but I still don't understand the reticence
to introduce new keywords (assuming a freely available migration
tool).
