I found out about AliasThis on the IRC, and it's pretty neat. I've got a suggestion for it however: Assigning a value to a class/struct which has aliased a member to this would forward the assignment to that member.

For instance:

----
struct IntPair {
	private int _pair;
	int left()  { return _pair[0]; }
	int right() { return _pair[1]; }
}

IntPair a = [1, 2]; // _pair = [1, 2]
IntPair b;
b.left(); //0
b = [3, 4];
b.left(); //3
----

Thoughts? I think it'd be very useful for defining types that look and act like built in primitives, but can have arbitrary methods and operator overloads attached to them.

Thanks to <jA_cOp> for bringing up AliasThis in IRC :-)

Oh this is embarrassing;
On Saturday, 18 May 2013 at 07:43:57 UTC, Dylan Knutson wrote:
> 	private int _pair;

should be
>       private int[2] _pair;

oh my; one more typo (I really wish these forums had edit functionality)

struct definition:

----
struct IntPair {
	private int[] _pair;
	int left()  { return _pair[0]; }
	int right() { return _pair[1]; }
	alias _pair this;
}
----

On Saturday, 18 May 2013 at 07:43:57 UTC, Dylan Knutson wrote:
> I found out about AliasThis on the IRC, and it's pretty neat. I've got a suggestion for it however: Assigning a value to a class/struct which has aliased a member to this would forward the assignment to that member.
>
> For instance:
>
> ----
> struct IntPair {
> 	private int _pair;
> 	int left()  { return _pair[0]; }
> 	int right() { return _pair[1]; }
> }
>
> IntPair a = [1, 2]; // _pair = [1, 2]
> IntPair b;
> b.left(); //0
> b = [3, 4];
> b.left(); //3
> ----
>
> Thoughts? I think it'd be very useful for defining types that look and act like built in primitives, but can have arbitrary methods and operator overloads attached to them.
>
> Thanks to <jA_cOp> for bringing up AliasThis in IRC :-)

Just overload assignment operator for that.


int[2] opBinary(string op)(int[2] rhs) if (op == "=") {
	_pair = rhs;
	return rhs;
}

>
> int[2] opBinary(string op)(int[2] rhs) if (op == "=") {
> 	_pair = rhs;
> 	return rhs;
> }

Oops, that should be IntPair opAssign(int[2] rhs)