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Re:The Vale Programming Language by klodolph on Friday November 20, 2020 @02:26PM (#25163910)
Yes, from that explanation it sounds like they are equivalent to Rust’s impl return types.

Note that interfaces in Rust are not types, they do not name types. A value cannot have interface type. What happens when you return an “impl” type is that you return some unspecified type, but that type must implement the specified interface.

You could translate the D example to:

    trait HasGetValue {
        fn get_value(&self) -> i32;
    }
    fn create_voldemort_type(value: i32) -> impl HasGetValue {
        ...
    }
The “create_voldemort_type” function simply returns a value of unspecified type. As far as I can tell, this is equivalent to the D code, except it doesn’t use type inference for the function type.
Re:The Vale Programming Language by moonchild on Friday November 20, 2020 @04:04PM (#25164919)
Not really. Part of the point of voldemort types is that no information about the type is 'leaked' outside the function. In this case, the trait 'HasGetValue' is leaked and can be used by other code.
Re:The Vale Programming Language by skohan on Friday November 20, 2020 @05:54PM (#25166071)
When would you want to have an interface such that nothing about the return type of a function is known to the outside world? I'm genuinely asking; I just don't understand the utility of this concept.
Re:The Vale Programming Language by mumblemumble on Friday November 20, 2020 @06:32PM (#25166432)
I don't think anyone's trying to argue about whether it's better or worse than the Rust concept. Just that it's subtly different.
Re:The Vale Programming Language by skohan on Friday November 20, 2020 @07:10PM (#25166692)
I'm not interested in comparing it to the rust concept. I'm just curious why this is something people find valuable in D, and why another commenter would call it a feature D "would be ruined without"
Re:The Vale Programming Language by bobthebuilders on Saturday November 21, 2020 @02:20AM (#25168323)
The commentor is just mistaken. The two do the exact same thing.
Re:The Vale Programming Language by skohan on Saturday November 21, 2020 @07:34AM (#25169345)
That's fine, but I'm not interested in comparing them and I still don't understand what the benefit is