Over the weekend I did some work on how to implement generic helpers since this
is something I wanted to do for a while and Sven said it was on the agenda.
It’s "low hanging fruit” kind of feature since all the pieces are there
(helpers and generics) just not put together, kind of multi helpers were.
The only question I have is how to deal with anonymous types and specialized
types which are being extended. For some reason they were disabled with helpers
but I think it makes sense to allow at least a limited set.
- For type helpers I think the most important type to support is dynamic arrays
but probably sets also, i.e. "type helper for array of T” or "type helper for
set of T”.
I know more could be supported like pointers "type helper for ^T”, which seems
kind of reasonable although I can’t really think of a purpose. I don’t have
any academic reason but dynamic arrays and sets are fundamental and singular
(even though compound) compiler types the user would want to extend. This
doesn’t apply to say some anonymous record.
- Second thing which should be supported are specialized types like “class
helper for specialized TMyClass<T>”. This is important so that generic classes
themselves can have generic helpers which extend them. Currently any inline
specialized type is blocked in helpers for some reason unknown to me but we
should lift that restriction for generic helpers.
That’s what I have so far. Let me know what can be done about those things so I
can move forward. Thank you.
Regards,
Ryan Joseph
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