On Tuesday, 7 September 2021 at 01:34:01 UTC, Basile B. wrote:

module m;

struct S { int i; }

S _s;

S s (){return _s;}

void main()
{
    s().i = 42;
}

Don't you think it would be better to raise a warning though instead of silently fixing it?

It would help people understand the differences between structs and classes better, and when they will be using them in a much more complex set of circumstances where the compiler won't be able to detect what they're doing, they'll use them the right way.

This seems like setting them up for frustration in the future, since one can definitely run into a case where struct will purely be treated as a value type and then the user will feel that the behaviour is inconsistent with what they've experienced.

This reminds me of single length string literals being treated as a character.

void main(){
      char[5] a = "y";//shouldn't compile, but it does

     char[5] b = 'y';
     writeln(a);
     writeln(b);
}

Output:
y
yyyyy

Was it a good thing that the compiler rewrote the string into a char in this case? Wouldn't it be better if an error/warning was provided instead?

On Tuesday, 7 September 2021 at 05:01:30 UTC, Tejas wrote:

no. as compiler experiment people can add a flag to generated temproaries and then printf on a visitor for VarExp and then will probabably be surprised by the amount of message printf'd like 2567 times

"look boy am saving expressivity for ya here"

On Tuesday, 7 September 2021 at 05:09:39 UTC, jfondren wrote:

void main(){
     char[5] a = "y";//shouldn't compile, but it does
     char[5] b = 'y';
     writeln(a);
     writeln(b);
}


Output:
y
yyyyy

Seems strange to only permit this with a string literal though.

unittest {
    char[3] a;
    char[2] b = '!';

    // this is OK
    a = "!!";
    assert(a == [33, 33, 0]);

    // Error: mismatched array lengths, 3 and 2
    assert(!__traits(compiles, a = ['!', '!']));
    assert(!__traits(compiles, { a[] = b[]; }));
}

On Tuesday, 7 September 2021 at 05:01:30 UTC, Tejas wrote:

no. as compiler experiment people can add a flag to generated temproaries and then printf on a visitor for VarExp and then will probabably be surprised by the amount of message printf'd like 2567 times

"look boy am saving expressivity for ya here"

import std.stdio;

struct S { int i; }

S _s;

S s() {return _s;}

void main()
{
    s().i = 42;
    writeln(_s.i == 42);
}

Output:
false

Wow, compiler help much appreciated

We need developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. Like that cringe Steve Ballmer moment. I don't know what Steve Ballmer is doing today but he is not at Microsoft anymore. Maybe we should hire him.

On Monday, 6 September 2021 at 19:35:19 UTC, IGotD- wrote:

D has/had numerous developers very few of us could rival. I definitely notice a lot less of the "elite" here than I used to in the 2014-2016ish period. I've also noticed a decline in talk about the language's future direction on this forum, as I assume the Slack and Discord is where most of that is happening now.

I wonder where all the action is now. I've said before that these forums used to have something exciting posted about the language's direction pretty at a relatively often pace, but now it seems to be a special occasion when something noteworthy is announced.

Hopefully it's all being saved for DConf >:3

/incoherent_unstructured_nonsense

That could also be because the language is getting small improvements all the time and focus is on stability and consistency rather than new things.

On Tuesday, 7 September 2021 at 13:36:39 UTC, Tejas wrote:

import std.stdio;

struct S { int i; }

S _s;

S s() {return _s;}

void main()
{
    s().i = 42;
    writeln(_s.i == 42);
}

Output:
false

Is this confusing to you? I might be missing your point. It isn’t confusing to me, structs are value types. If you want s() to return a reference to _s it should be declared as returning a reference:

import std.stdio;

struct S { int i; }

S _s;

ref S s() {return _s;}

void main()
{
    s().i = 42;
    writeln(_s.i == 42);
}

Output:
true

—Bastiaan.