🚀 go-pugleaf

ENGR@GSSI.MV.COM (Michael Furman) writes:
	...
>>Instead, there would simply be attributes, which could be accessed
>>(i.e. square.Area).  Whether these were implemented as a data member or
>>as a function (i.e. { return height * width; }) is not particularly
>>relevent to the caller, so why should he specify "Area()" rather than
>>simply "Area".

>It is so close to my ideal. But I have one addition. You described "abstract 
>read source interface". I would like to have also "write interface": to let 
>caller write just "square.Area = 10;" instead of "square.Change_Area(10)".

To paraphrase Dennis Ritchie: "If you want Sather, you know where to find
it...!":-).  (If you _don't_ know: ftp.icsi.berkeley.edu, /pub/sather).

To explain: it is of course unthinkable that changes of this magnitude
would be adopted in the standard as late as NOW.  And a good thing, too!
C++ cannot and should not be all things to all people -- it's arguably
even too large as it stands; and it's unarguably high time for a STABLE
standard for it.

Other languages (excellent ones, too) are exploring and will further
explore every conceivable corner of the language-design space.  Sather,
in particular, among many other ideas, implements exactly this sort of
syntactic sugar; if it's really that important to you, I _do_ stronly
suggest you try it out.  (Personally, it's one of their few choices
that I _dis_like, so, I'm _quite_ happy that C++ doesn't have it:-).


Alex


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