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digitalmars.D - Use cases for alias parameters

reply Bruno Medeiros <brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> writes:
I was reading the discussion at 
http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1100 , and then it got me 
thinking:

What are the use cases for alias parameters, other than:
* parameters that are templates
* parameters that are variables
?

In particular is there any meaningful use case for:
* parameters that are either variables or types ?


-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D
Nov 13 2007
next sibling parent "Chris Miller" <chris dprogramming.com> writes:
On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:12:09 -0500, Bruno Medeiros  =

<brunodomedeiros+spam com.gmail> wrote:

 I was reading the discussion at  =
 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=3D1100 , and then it got=
me =
 thinking:

 What are the use cases for alias parameters, other than:
 * parameters that are templates
 * parameters that are variables
 ?

 In particular is there any meaningful use case for:
 * parameters that are either variables or types ?
What about something that takes either a constant or a variable, = determined by the caller, without code duplication? It is also especiall= y = useful with delegate literals, where this allows inlining.
Nov 13 2007
prev sibling parent reply Jari-Matti =?ISO-8859-1?Q?M=E4kel=E4?= <jmjmak utu.fi.invalid> writes:
Bruno Medeiros wrote:

 I was reading the discussion at
 http://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=1100 , and then it got me
 thinking:
 
 What are the use cases for alias parameters, other than:
 * parameters that are templates
 * parameters that are variables
 ?
 
 In particular is there any meaningful use case for:
 * parameters that are either variables or types ?
You can do all kinds of stuff with types, for example foldr/l, currying, filter, map etc. These are pretty awesome features in my opinion. I'm still hoping we could somehow unify the templates and proposed macros in some way. The undocumented feature Chris mentioned is pretty interesting indeed: template foo(alias bar) { ... } void moose() { foo!({ chicken(); }); ... } Since alias accepts only explicitly defined symbols and for some unknown reason delegate literals, I thought this was a hidden macro system :) It could possibly inline the delegate but it doesn't currently :| Also there are interesting places where alias parameters could be used, e.g. operator overloadings (to avoid extra parameter passing). Extending these could eliminate many cases where you need to use ugly CTFE&mixin trick.
Nov 13 2007
parent "Jarrett Billingsley" <kb3ctd2 yahoo.com> writes:
"Jari-Matti Mäkelä" <jmjmak utu.fi.invalid> wrote in message 
news:fhd1pm$dke$1 digitalmars.com...

 Since alias accepts only explicitly defined symbols and for some unknown
 reason delegate literals, I thought this was a hidden macro system :) It
 could possibly inline the delegate but it doesn't currently :| Also there
 are interesting places where alias parameters could be used, e.g. operator
 overloadings (to avoid extra parameter passing). Extending these could
 eliminate many cases where you need to use ugly CTFE&mixin trick.
This works because a delegate literal is really a reference to an implicitly-defined nested function. So you're passing an alias to an automatically-generated symbol name. It works with function literals too: foo!(function void(){ chicken(); });
Nov 13 2007