Re:Features of D That I Love
by WalterBright on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @07:09PM
(#44449786)
The in/out features come into their own when inheritance is in play, i.e. for member functions of classes and interfaces. See https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#in_out_inheritance
`import` is so cool we extended it to be able to import .c files! The D compiler internally translates them to D so they can be used. When this was initially proposed, the reaction was "what's that good for?" It turned out to be incredibly useful and a huge time saver.
The concept is sort of like C++ being a superset of C and so being able to incorporate C code, except unlike C++, the C syntax can be left behind. After all, don't we get tired of:
struct Tag { ... } Tag;
?
Re:Features of D That I Love
by 1718627440 on Thursday July 03, 2025 @04:18AM
(#44452827)
> struct Tag { ... } Tag;
What's the thing with the syntax? If you don't intend to use the type elsewhere don't give it a tag, if you want, you have to give it a name. (Assuming you are annoyed by the duplicate Tag)
Re:Features of D That I Love
by WalterBright on Friday July 04, 2025 @12:29PM
(#44465877)
Which would you prefer:
struct Tag { ... }
or: typedef struct Tag { ... } Tag;
? It's just simpler and easier to write code in D than in C/C++. For another example, in C/C++: int foo();
int bar() { return foo(); }
int foo() { return 3; }
The D equivalent: int bar() { return foo(); }
int foo() { return 3; }
Re:Features of D That I Love
by 1718627440 on Friday July 04, 2025 @05:38PM
(#44468064)
If the user of Tag is supposed to know how the internal details:
struct Tag { ... };
if it needs to rely on the internals, but the user shouldn't care: typedef struct { ... } Tag;
if it can be opaque (what I would default to): typedef struct {} Tag;
I also think that is a good feature to separate specification from implementation, I like being forced to declare first what I want to implement. Funnily in your special case you wouldn't need the declaration. (But of course it's a bad idea to rely on this "feature")
Re:Features of D That I Love
by WalterBright on Wednesday July 02, 2025 @07:19PM
(#44449858)
My C++ compiler also implemented contracts back in the 90s: https://www.digitalmars.com/ctg/contract.html
Modern C++ is slowly adopting D features, many of which came from extensions I added to my C++ compiler.
Anyway, I used the DM C++ compiler originally because it was the only one I could download to the high school computers without filling out a form, and pimply-face youth me saw "DESIGN BY CONTRACT" at the top of the website and got kinda excited thinking it was a way to make some easy money coding online.
Imagine my disappointment when I saw it was just in/out/invariant/assert features. (I'm pretty sure D had just come out when I saw that, but I saw `import` instead of `#include` and dismissed it as a weenie language. Came back a couple years later and cursed my younger self for being a fool! lol)