When making instances of my composite Julia types, such as
foo = Foo(1, "bartxt", 3.14)
I often have to look up the definition, because I don't remember whether,
in this case, "bar" was the first or the second field:
type Foo
bar::AbstractString
baz::Int
qux::Float64
end
"bar" was the first field, so the correct construction is
foo = Foo("bartxt", 1, 3.14)
In this case the first, incorrect code would not compile because of no
matching method.
But for
type Goo
vertical::Float64
horizontal::Float64
qux::Float64
end
it is easy to write incorrect code when the order of the fields gets mixed
up, and such bugs are potentially difficult to find.
Wouldn't it be possible to allow (optionally) for a syntax like
foo = Foo(;bar=bartxt, baz=1, qux=3.14);
goo = Goo(;horizontal=186.,vertical=0.33, qux=3.14)
where the keyword arguments are the fieldnames of the type?
Often I remember the fields of a type, but not their order.
With this syntax the argument order would be arbitrary.
The syntax would imply, that incorrect, non-existing, or missing
fields/keywords result in an error.
Thanks for your consideration.
