On 25/10/2010 16:01, Michel Fortin wrote:
On 2010-10-25 10:32:45 -0400, Bruno Medeiros
<brunodomedeiros+s...@com.gmail> said:
On 26/09/2010 14:26, Michel Fortin wrote:
Unfortunately, one attribute with the @ syntax in D -- and I'd say the
flagship one as it was the first and most discussed -- is not a pure
annotation as it has a noticeable effect on semantics. I'm talking about
@property which, if it ever get implemented, changes your function so it
simulates a field. In Herb's terms, @property is clearly a keyword in
disguise.
You don't want attributes to affect semantics? That's odd, it seems to
me the most useful scenarios for @attributes is actually to affect
semantics, and they're somewhat limited otherwise.
I mean, what exactly do you mean by "effect on semantics" ?
What I meant is that @property actually *changes* the semantics: calling
the function becomes a different thing and the function lose its regular
semantics. Other attributes only *restrict* existing semantics, they
don't change the existing semantics beyond making illegal some things
which are normally legal.
Hum, I think I see what you mean. That being the case, I agree, if an
@annotation radically changes the nature of whatever is being defined,
it probably should not be an @annotation.
But I don't agree with Herb Sutter's comment that "Attributes are
acceptable as pure annotations, but they should have no semantic effect
on the program.", at least as applied to D. Just the fact that C++'s
attribute are 4-characters extra (compared to just 1 in D, or Java for
example) makes the comparison not very valid. I also would not like to
have [[override]] [[pure]] [[safe]] , etc. in D.
--
Bruno Medeiros - Software Engineer
