• Steven Schveighoffer (31/31) Sep 20 2010 One of the huge limitations of D is delegate/function ptr implicit

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy yahoo.com> writes:

One of the huge limitations of D is delegate/function ptr implicit  
casting.  What I mean is, implicitly casting a delegate from one type to  
another when the types of the arguments implicitly cast (without  
modification).

An example of this is contravariance.  For example:

class A {}
class B : A {}

void main()
{
   int foo(A a) {return 1;}

   int delegate(B b) x = &foo; // should work.
}

Another example is for constancy:

void foo(const(int)[] arr) {}

void function(int[] arr) x = &foo;

(note that this latter one works, but due to a compiler bug)

Finally, you should be able to implicitly cast away pure/nothrow.

pure nothrow int foo(int x) {return x;}

int function(int) x = &foo;

What I meant by "when the types of the arguments implicitly cast" was to  
deal with the "implicit" casting of types.  For instance, you can  
implicitly cast an int to a long, but you could not create a delegate that  
takes an int out of a function that takes a long.  Same thing for  
classes/interfaces.

Thoughts?  Walter previously rejected the contravariance for delegates  
idea on the grounds that he didn't want to do contravariance for  
everything (I believe contravariance just for delegates/functions is a  
perfectly encapsulated use).

Note that this would help in certain aspects of the runtime.  For example,  
see bug http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3715

-Steve