The following code:
void f() { f; }
void main() {
    f();
}

compiled by DMD v1.0 (on Windows XP) generates an "Error: Stack Overflow" error.

Marcio Faustino wrote:

> The following code:
> void f() { f; }
> void main() {
>     f();
> }
> 
> compiled by DMD v1.0 (on Windows XP) generates an "Error: Stack Overflow"
> error.

This is a programmer error. you are calling the function f within the function f causing an infinite recursion.

Marcio Faustino wrote:
> The following code:
> void f() { f; }
> void main() {
>     f();
> }
> 
> compiled by DMD v1.0 (on Windows XP) generates an "Error: Stack Overflow" error.

Are you saying you'd like D to implement the tail recursion elimination optimization?  Because most C/C++ compilers would probably generate a stack overflow on the equivalent of that code too.

Oh, you do realize D treats  'blah' as a synonym for 'blah()' if blah is a function or delegate, right?

--bb

Bill Baxter wrote:
> Oh, you do realize D treats  'blah' as a synonym for 'blah()' if blah > is a
function or delegate, right?

Didn't know that, how dumb of me. Sorry.

Marcio Faustino wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> Oh, you do realize D treats  'blah' as a synonym for 'blah()' if blah > is a
> function or delegate, right?
> 
> Didn't know that, how dumb of me. Sorry.

No need to apologize.  I was surprised by that one too, initially, even though I knew methods could be called without the ().  I just didn't expect that would extend to top-level functions too.

--bb

Bill Baxter wrote:


> Oh, you do realize D treats  'blah' as a synonym for 'blah()' if blah is a function or delegate, right?

I think it's a harmful and error-prone feature. And it's also inconsistent:

auto f2 = f; // here f is treated like a variable
f; // here f means call itself, but it looks exactly the same

Why on earth is this needed ?

-- 

"Andrey Khropov" <andkhropov_nosp@m_mtu-net.ru> wrote in message news:ep01si$o08$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>
>
>> Oh, you do realize D treats  'blah' as a synonym for 'blah()' if blah is
>> a
>> function or delegate, right?
>
> I think it's a harmful and error-prone feature. And it's also inconsistent:
>
> auto f2 = f; // here f is treated like a variable
> f; // here f means call itself, but it looks exactly the same
>
> Why on earth is this needed ?

(implicit) properties.

#auto f2 = f;    // f can be a variable or a property getter

(Uhm, that would work, if there weren't that issue with using auto + a getter that way.)

I like this feature. It gets rid of many () pairs, and I think it's a straightforward way for properties.

L.

Andrey Khropov wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
> 
> 
>> Oh, you do realize D treats  'blah' as a synonym for 'blah()' if blah is a
>> function or delegate, right?
> 
> I think it's a harmful and error-prone feature. And it's also inconsistent:
> 
> auto f2 = f; // here f is treated like a variable
> f; // here f means call itself, but it looks exactly the same
> 
> Why on earth is this needed ?
> 

I know what you mean.  But it's very handy in the context of methods that masquerade as properties.  So you can say obj.prop instead of obj.prop().  I think I would prefer, though, if that feature had to be explicitly enabled for a particular method.  Something like:

    property float prop() { return m_prop; }

Then for most functions (which aren't properties) we could dispense with the & required to take the address.

On the other hand there is something to be said for consistency and regularity.  foo is synonymous with foo() if foo is a function.  Period.   So I can sorta see why Walter made it the way it is.  That and probably it was a lot easier to implement the way it is, since the compiler doesn't have to keep track of whether a function is a 'property' function or not.

--bb