Just discovered D.  My first question is, why overload ~ and ~= for string concatenation?  These are very odd choices.  The natural choices are of course + and +=.  If you don't want to do that because of a conflict with pointer arithmetic, consider that pointer arithmetic without intermediate conversion to integer types is a horrifying misfeature. :-)

<neroden@twcny.rr.com> wrote in message news:aaova1$srd$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> Just discovered D.  My first question is, why overload ~ and ~= for string concatenation?  These are very odd choices.  The natural choices are of
course
> + and +=.  If you don't want to do that because of a conflict with pointer arithmetic, consider that pointer arithmetic without intermediate
conversion to
> integer types is a horrifying misfeature. :-)

The reason was to save + and += on arrays to do an element-by-element add, such as a matrix add.

Overloading + to mean "add" in once context and "concatenate" in another
leads to ambiguity bugs like:
    "123" + 4

Does this produce the string:
    "1234"
or the number:
    127
?

There is no such ambiguity in D's approach, and so no need to invent an arbitrary, obscure, and forgettable rule about what to do in ambiguous cases.