[fpc-devel] Templates / Generics Syntax

[Daniël Mantione]

Op Thu, 3 Nov 2005, schreef Mattias Gaertner:

> 
> Here is a proposal of the syntax:
> 
> type
>   TGenericClass<T,F> = class
>   public
>     procedure Add(Item: T; Flag: F);
>   end;

This syntax is almost impossible to implement since in one of your other 
mails the symbols to mark the parameters appear in regular source code:

begin
  generictypeA<integer>.create
end.

It will be very hard for the parser to see the difference in advance 
between:

  variable<integer(another_var)
  generic_type<integer

Only when the > symbol is parsed the result is known.

Maybe the parser may be able lookup the type first and make a decision 
based on that, but it would be in the middle of a recursive expression 
parse designed for infix operators.

Also in C++ this sometimes causes trouble where you need to change your 
code notation so the compiler eats it. I don't know if this proposal 
suffers from this mess, but we should avoid at all cost to import it into 
Pascal.

Daniël