On Thu, 20 Jan 2011 08:47:28 -0500, Justin Johansson <jj@nospam.com> wrote:

Not long ago the Java Language people introduced the idea of annotations together with an annotation processing tool (apt).

Now perhaps the idea of source code annotations is not actually a Java invention per se, however for someone learning D is there any equivalent idiom [of Java annotations] in the D language?

Haven't used Java since they added annotations, but I think they are like C# attributes?

In any case, D has an annotation syntax like:

@property

But I think at the moment, annotations have no custom ability.  Only compiler-defined annotations are allowed.  This may change in the future, but probably not short-term.  FWIW, I think we need a much richer runtime-reflection capability before we can use custom annotations to any great effect.