It seems to me there exist a few "unofficial" keywords in D that should be promoted to reserved words:

"string", "dstring", "wstring" -- I'm assuming that backward compatibility is the only reason these are not declared as keywords. Is there more to it than that?

"tuple" -- The use of tuples is ubiquitous in D. There is a a "tupleof" property for structs and unions. The "foreach" keyword knows about them. Yet there is no syntactic support for the thing itself. It is confusing to be required to define a template to access something the compiler creates. This may be just syntactic sugar but it's necessary sugar, IMHO.

Paul

On 05/04/2008, Paul D. Anderson <paul.d.anderson.removethis@comcast.andthis.net> wrote:
>  "tuple" -- The use of tuples is ubiquitous in D. There is a a "tupleof" property for structs and unions. The "foreach" keyword knows about them. Yet there is no syntactic support for the thing itself. It is confusing to be required to define a template to access something the compiler creates. This may be just syntactic sugar but it's necessary sugar, IMHO.

In fact, the word "tuple" is ambiguous in D. If you believe the article "Tuples" on the digitalmars website then a tuple is a sequence of a mix of types and values, whereas if you believe the documentation for std.typecons then a Tuple! is an aggregate of values (so that a function can return multiple values, for example).

In all computer languages of which I am aware, the word "tuple" normally has the latter meaning. The former meaning is perhaps better described by the phrase "variadic template arguments". I have submitted a bug report pointing out the ambiguity, and maybe the documentation should be fixed one day.

Paul D. Anderson wrote:
> It seems to me there exist a few "unofficial" keywords in D that should be promoted to reserved words:
> 
> "string", "dstring", "wstring" -- I'm assuming that backward compatibility is the only reason these are not declared as keywords. Is there more to it than that?

These are aliases in the library. They have as much right to be keywords as "Socket" or "printf".

> "tuple" -- The use of tuples is ubiquitous in D. There is a a "tupleof" property for structs and unions. The "foreach" keyword knows about them. Yet there is no syntactic support for the thing itself. It is confusing to be required to define a template to access something the compiler creates. This may be just syntactic sugar but it's necessary sugar, IMHO.

I agree there should be syntactic support for tuples, but I don't think the "tuple" keyword is best. Instead, what about (int, float, 3) being a  tuple?

> Paul

The _real_ de facto keyword is the word "length" since when it's used inside an array index it shadows any variable called "length" outside.

Robert Fraser Wrote:

> Paul D. Anderson wrote:
> > It seems to me there exist a few "unofficial" keywords in D that should be promoted to reserved words:
> > 
> > "string", "dstring", "wstring" -- I'm assuming that backward compatibility is the only reason these are not declared as keywords. Is there more to it than that?
> 
> These are aliases in the library. They have as much right to be keywords as "Socket" or "printf".
> 

I'm aware they are aliases. My concern is that they are so common in the library that anyone who deliberately (or worse, ignorantly) uses them somewhere else is likely to have problems. The way to avoid these problems (IMHO) is to reserve the words.

> > "tuple" -- The use of tuples is ubiquitous in D. There is a a "tupleof" property for structs and unions. The "foreach" keyword knows about them. Yet there is no syntactic support for the thing itself. It is confusing to be required to define a template to access something the compiler creates. This may be just syntactic sugar but it's necessary sugar, IMHO.
> 
> I agree there should be syntactic support for tuples, but I don't think
> the "tuple" keyword is best. Instead, what about (int, float, 3) being a
>   tuple?
> 

My personal preference is for a keyword rather than a syntactic interpretation, but I wouldn't object to the change you describe. My gripe is with the reliance on a template for access to fundamental constructs.


> > Paul
> 
> The _real_ de facto keyword is the word "length" since when it's used inside an array index it shadows any variable called "length" outside.

I agree, but I can hear the screams from the populace who have used "length" all over their code. All the more reason, IMO, to make the change now.

Paul

On 05/04/2008, Paul D. Anderson <paul.d.anderson.removethis@comcast.andthis.net> >  > I agree there should be syntactic support for tuples, but I don't think
>  > the "tuple" keyword is best. Instead, what about (int, float, 3) being a
>  >   tuple?

I use std.typecons.Tuple quite a lot (...ever since I discovered it!), as it allows functions to return multiple values.

I dislike the /other/ meaning "tuple", which is a random mix of types and values - e.g. (int, float, 3). I'd rather they were called something else - if indeed they need a name at all! (I suspect they don't. The phrase "variadic template parameters" describes what they are just fine).

Paul D. Anderson wrote:
>> The _real_ de facto keyword is the word "length" since when it's used inside an array index it shadows any variable called "length" outside.
> 
> I agree, but I can hear the screams from the populace who have used "length" all over their code. All the more reason, IMO, to make the change now.
> 
> Paul

The idea I saw before was to remove "length" as a specifier within array  indexes, and just use "$".