BCS Wrote:

> Hello dsimcha,
> 
> > Just curious, why doesn't D, and why don't more statically typed languages in general, support overload by return type?  I haven't exactly thought through all the pros and cons, but at first glance it seems like an incredibly useful thing.  What's the catch that I'm missing?
> > 
> 
> Off hand it's one more degree of freedom (and confusion) in trying to figure out what type something is.
> 
> int bar(char[] c)
> int[] bar(char[] c)
> 
> float baz(int i)
> object baz(int[] i)
> 
> auto z = baz(bar("what type is z"));
> 
> float foo();
> object foo();
> 
> z = foo();  // what foo?
> 
> Also for all other cases in D (and C, and C++, and C#, and ...) the semantics of an expression is not dependent on what expression it is nested under. Changing this could have far reaching consequences.

Fortunately, D already has this bug http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=52