Take a peek at the following code:

class test {}

class test2
{
auto test T;
}

void main() {}

The 'auto' in this example is not supposed to be "legal", since T is a class member. Yet the compiler doesn't seem to complain about it and the above compiles fine.(However, if we make the above class 'test' an auto class, the compiler suddenly starts complaining...)

Ok, so that was the bug, now for the suggestion:

In C++ you can declare class members in the following way:
class test2
{
test T;
..
};

When an object of class test2 goes out of scope, T is automatically destructed. You can't really do this in D, without adding delete statements to the destructor. So how about having auto members automatically destruct when the owner destructs, i.e. making "auto test T" in the above example equivalent with adding a "delete T" in the destructor?

Nick

In article <cdp9m0$13lm$1@digitaldaemon.com>, Nick says...
>
>In C++ you can declare class members in the following way:
>class test2
>{
>test T;
>..
>};
>
>When an object of class test2 goes out of scope, T is automatically destructed. You can't really do this in D, without adding delete statements to the destructor. So how about having auto members automatically destruct when the owner destructs, i.e. making "auto test T" in the above example equivalent with adding a "delete T" in the destructor?

The idea of partially destructed classes lingering kind of scares me.  It means that just passing a class out of a scope will have side effects.  And side effects are rarely a good thing :)  I think it could be useful if used carefully, but I'm not convinced that this outweighs its potential misuse.


Sean

Nick wrote:
<snip>
> When an object of class test2 goes out of scope, T is automatically destructed.
> You can't really do this in D, without adding delete statements to the
> destructor. So how about having auto members automatically destruct when the
> owner destructs, i.e. making "auto test T" in the above example equivalent with
> adding a "delete T" in the destructor?

Without guaranteed destruction of objects in general, this would break the guaranteed destruction of auto objects.

Maybe we could allow auto members to be declared in an auto class.  But is there any way we could stop circular data structures being created in this department and hence screwing things up?

Stewart.

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