On 15 March 2012 19:05, Andrei Alexandrescu <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org>wrote:
> On 3/15/12 11:30 AM, Manu wrote: > >> On 15 March 2012 17:32, Andrei Alexandrescu >> <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org >> <mailto:SeeWebsiteForEmail@**erdani.org<seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> >> >> >> >> wrote: >> One note - the code is really ingenious, but I still prefer swap() >> in this case. It's more concise and does less work in the general case. >> >> swap(a[i + k], a[j + j]); >> >> only computes the indexing once (in source, too). >> >> >> It all still feels to me like a generally ugly hack around the original >> example: >> a,b = b,a; >> > > It's a function call. Why is a function call a ugly hack? > Because now we're involving libraries to perform a trivial assignment. It's also more verbose. Compare > > swap(a[i + k], a[i + j]); > > with > > a[i + k], a[i + j] = a[i + j], a[i + k]; > > I mean one could even easily miss a typo in there. > That's fair, and in that case you might want to call such a function. But I think that's very contrived. I can't remember the last time I ever wanted to perform a swap on anything other than stack primitives. Also I think this (and perhaps more so MRV) will find a very major use case in maths code, and maths code tends to revolve around simple (often single letter) maths-y type variable names. There's also semantic issues to be defined. What is the order of evaluation > in > > f(), g() = h(), k(); > > ? > Left to right, clearly. Keep it simple. All of this adds dead weight to the language. We shouldn't reach to new > syntax for every single little thing. MRV is not 'every single little thing'. I'd say it's the single major checklist item that D just doesn't tick (and perhaps user attributes, although there's no resistance there, it's just not done yet). I get the impression I'm not the only one here that feels that way too. I'm perhaps just louder, and more annoying :)
