• no where.com (25/25) Nov 04 2004 I'm not sure if this issue has been discussed before: I just encoutered...
• Sean Kelly (8/28) Nov 05 2004 I'm not sure if it is feasible either, but it would be very nice to have...

no where.com writes:

I'm not sure if this issue has been discussed before:  I just encoutered the
following compiler error message

class Foo {...}

Vector!(Foo) fv;

F:\dlib\std\dtl\containers\vector.d(620): no property 'min' for type 'Foo'

and the offending line in file vector.d are

// This will need to be genericised in order to work with
// reference types and scalar types
return value_type.min;

I wonder how should we avoid such issues.

1) C++'s pay-as-you-go approach: in my case, I don't need the feature
Vector!(Foo).min() at all.  So this function should not be instanciated by the
compiler at all.  I'm not sure how template is implmenented in D, and if this
approach is feasiable.

2) Move .min() out of the template definition, and define it as a global
function min(Vector ...) maybe in a different module.  Still this require the
compiler to instantiate the function only when it's necessary by calculating the
call-graph.

3) the compiler always blindly instantiates everything; then in this case the
library designer must take care not to write code that refer to properties that
are not avaiable in Object and scalar types.

4) constraint genericity as in Eiffel and Java 1.5: define template togather
with the type which is allowed to be passed in as type arguments:  Vector( T:
Minable ).  So only types which defined .min() can be passed to Vector.

So which approach is the current D taking now?

Sean Kelly <sean f4.ca> writes:

In article <cmf4te$v16$1 digitaldaemon.com>, no where.com says...
I'm not sure if this issue has been discussed before:  I just encoutered the
following compiler error message

class Foo {...}

Vector!(Foo) fv;

F:\dlib\std\dtl\containers\vector.d(620): no property 'min' for type 'Foo'

and the offending line in file vector.d are

// This will need to be genericised in order to work with
// reference types and scalar types
return value_type.min;

I wonder how should we avoid such issues.

1) C++'s pay-as-you-go approach: in my case, I don't need the feature
Vector!(Foo).min() at all.  So this function should not be instanciated by the
compiler at all.  I'm not sure how template is implmenented in D, and if this
approach is feasiable.

I'm not sure if it is feasible either, but it would be very nice to have.
Convenience aside, it would also result in a smaller code footprint, which would
be advantageous for a systems programming language.

3) the compiler always blindly instantiates everything; then in this case the
library designer must take care not to write code that refer to properties that
are not avaiable in Object and scalar types.



4) constraint genericity as in Eiffel and Java 1.5: define template togather
with the type which is allowed to be passed in as type arguments:  Vector( T:
Minable ).  So only types which defined .min() can be passed to Vector.

This should certainly be possible using traits templates, but it should not be
necessary.


Sean