• Iliya Peregoudov (14/14) Sep 09 2001 As I understand D tries to be so self-documenting as it can. From

Iliya Peregoudov <iliyap mail.ru> writes:

As I understand D tries to be so self-documenting as it can.  From
this point of view a new feature can be added:

Type modifiers 'intrinsic' and 'extrinsic' can be used in instance
variables declarations. Variables must be pointers or other data
types implemented as pointers, for example, objects.  This keywords
clarify is the pointer points to intrinsic part of the object (ie.
the part that have no sense without the object, that created with
the object and destroyed when object is destroyed) or points to 
extrinsic object that have its own independent life time.

Such modifiers can help compiler to generate correct default
constructor and destructor, and deepcopy method (if there will be
such a thing).  They also can inform garbage collector that
intrinsic instance variables have to be collected with the object.

They also play a good documentation role :)