On 16 March 2012 16:51, Adam D. Ruppe
<destructionator@gmail.com> wrote:
On Friday, 16 March 2012 at 14:11:35 UTC, Manu wrote:
Surely the term you're looking for here is @annotate(...) ?
Meh, I don't care that much about names. I went
with "note" anticipating people would complain about
@add_user_defined_attribute() being too long :)
What if you want to annotate with a variable?
That *might* work because a variable is an expression too.
I'm not sure though. Will probably have to implement to
know for sure.
Of course, a constant can be represented as a struct
for name and value:
struct Description { string s; }
@note(Description("yada yada yada")) int a;
Surely this is just as easy: @modulename.attribute int myThing;
Yeah, I think so. I remember this being a counterpoint
last time we talked about it, but I don't recall the
specific argument made.
Perhaps that's the key distinction between 'annotation' and a 'custom attributes' .. an annotation this way is a shared compile time constant, associating with its type info, as you suggest. A custom attribute is an instance-specific association vontaining variable data.
Yeah, "annotation" might be the better word. That's
what I want here, but too late to change the subject name
now.
attribute myAttribute
I think this could be done as a struct, but I haven't
used this kind of attribute at all so not sure...
But what I'm thinking is:
struct myAttribute(Type) {
Type value;
alias value this;
bool bNeedsAttention;
@property void refresh(bool bRefresh) { bNeedsAttention = bRefresh; }
}
myAttribute!int thing;
thing.refresh = true;
and thing can be substituted for an int anywhere else.
Interesting approach, how will that affect 'thing's type?