On 7/27/18 7:24 AM, Simen Kjærås wrote:
On Friday, 27 July 2018 at 10:30:07 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
It evolved out of D's member function call syntax for arrays -
basically, for years before we had UFCS in D, we had UFCS for arrays.
However, when and how that was added to arrays, I don't know. I don't
recall it ever not being in the language, but I never used D1, and I
don't know if it had it. At minimum, it's been in D since early D2, if
not much earlier. I'd have to do a lot of spelunking through old
releases to figure out when it was added.
Certainly, the origins of UFCS in D do not come from making it
possible to extend user-defined types with member functions. It comes
from wanting member function call syntax when using arrays (probably
aimed primarily at strings, but I don't know). It's just that later it
was proposed to extend it so that it would work with any type and thus
make the member function call syntax universal.
This compiles in DMD 0.50 (oldest version on the download page, nov 20,
2002), so I think it's safe to say it's been around for a while:
void fun(int[] arr) {}
void main() {
int[] a;
a.fun();
}
Arrays' .reverse, .sort and others were added in 0.24, but I can't find
a download for anything before 0.50.
Reverse and sort were properties (compiler built-ins), not extensions.
If it existed in 2002, it's safe to say it was there pretty much from
the beginning.
-Steve
