Rework generic paths for associated functions: T::function()

[rust-highfive]

Issue by bjz
Sunday Jun 02, 2013 at 00:22 GMT

For earlier discussion, see rust-lang/rust#6894

This issue was labelled with: B-RFC, P-high in the Rust repository

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This issue formalizes @pcwalton's RFC on the mailing list. This was also discussed in the 2013-05-14 meeting and in #6087. Steps towards this have already been made in #6462.

Whilst this is not a high priority change at the moment (understandably there are far bigger fish to fry), this is a semi-common question on the IRC and I think it's good if we have some place to redirect questions to.

Instead of the current:

Real::pi::<float>()

this change would allow you to do:

float::pi()

or

type T = float;
T::pi()

This could also allow for neat things like a generic SizeOf trait: T::size_of(), which is far nicer than the current size_of::<T>(). Or maybe there could be an Init trait for default initializers: T::init().

[alexcrichton]

I believe this has since been implemented, so closing.