On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 11:12:12 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:

>
> The OP has a well-motivated use case. I don't understand at all why you are being this dismissive. The inability to serialize static variables scoped inside functions is clearly an arbitrary limitation that should be lifted.

Sorry that I came off that way. I'm not opposed to the feature at all. If someone wants to implement it, I expect it can get by without a DIP. An enhancement request in Bugzilla should suffice.

I was responding to the OP's concern about users of the library. Based on my experience, I just can't imagine it ever being an issue. Of course, I may well be wrong.

On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 13:36:24 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
> On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 11:12:12 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
>
>>
>> The OP has a well-motivated use case. I don't understand at all why you are being this dismissive. The inability to serialize static variables scoped inside functions is clearly an arbitrary limitation that should be lifted.
>
> Sorry that I came off that way. I'm not opposed to the feature at all. If someone wants to implement it, I expect it can get by without a DIP. An enhancement request in Bugzilla should suffice.
>
> I was responding to the OP's concern about users of the library. Based on my experience, I just can't imagine it ever being an issue. Of course, I may well be wrong.

I made a library before that would store the whole application state in a file, restart the application when an update on the filesystem exists and restore the state from the file automatically on startup in the new process using traits. I only had some fixed global variables but if you made that a library I can see serializing static variables as a good inclusion.

On 19.10.21 18:43, Imperatorn wrote:
> On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 08:31:47 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 08:15:01 UTC, Ogi wrote:
>>>
>>> What are we talking about is not a game but an engine to be used for making different games, potentially by people other than me. So this is a limitation that the users will have to be aware of and work around it, and failing to do so will result in silent bugs in their code because there’s no way to enforce it at compile time.
>>
>> Personally, this isn't something I would expect, nor would I worry about it. Static variables in functions are generally there because they are scoped to that function, to be used within that function over the run time of the program. There shouldn't be any reason whatsoever for them to be accessible outside the function.
>>
>> The idea that you are even considering serializing them is just a foreign concept to me. If I wanted to make something available to a serializer, I wouldn't declare it inside a function. I'd put it at module scope, or in an aggregate. I'm not saying no one would ever think of it (you obviously did), but in 25 years of following various online programming communities (C, Java, D, game development, etc.) I can't recall seeing anyone bring it up before now. I can't imagine it would be common enough to be an issue.
> 
> I was actually thinking something similar. Have never heard of that requirement before. You're serializing the object, not the class, and the static variable doesn't belong to the object (in many languages) but the class. I guess D looked at Java? Have no evidence of that atm tho.
> 
> That doesn't mean D *should* "do what Java does" ofc.

This is about static variables at function scope. Java does not have static variables at function scope.

string uniqueName(){
    static int id = 0; // this is the value that OP wants to preserve on reload
    return text("__tmp", id++);
}

On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 17:04:32 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 19.10.21 18:43, Imperatorn wrote:
>> On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 08:31:47 UTC, Mike Parker wrote:
>>> [...]
>> 
>> I was actually thinking something similar. Have never heard of that requirement before. You're serializing the object, not the class, and the static variable doesn't belong to the object (in many languages) but the class. I guess D looked at Java? Have no evidence of that atm tho.
>> 
>> That doesn't mean D *should* "do what Java does" ofc.
>
> This is about static variables at function scope. Java does not have static variables at function scope.
>
> string uniqueName(){
>     static int id = 0; // this is the value that OP wants to preserve on reload
>     return text("__tmp", id++);
> }

Ok, I know nothing about Java other than D got some inspiration from it. What I do know is C#.

On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 17:08:41 UTC, Imperatorn wrote:
> On Tuesday, 19 October 2021 at 17:04:32 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> On 19.10.21 18:43, Imperatorn wrote:
>>> [...]
>>
>> This is about static variables at function scope. Java does not have static variables at function scope.
>>
>> string uniqueName(){
>>     static int id = 0; // this is the value that OP wants to preserve on reload
>>     return text("__tmp", id++);
>> }
>
> Ok, I know nothing about Java other than D got some inspiration from it. What I do know is C#.

Well, ok, I know *some* things. Wrote some mobile Java apps but that's about it.