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Subject: Re: [std-proposals] Reserve good keywords for floating point types

From: Arthur O'Dwyer (arthur.j.odwyer_at_[hidden])

Date: 2019-10-14 16:44:30

On Sun, Oct 13, 2019 at 2:35 PM Lyberta via Std-Proposals <

std-proposals_at_[hidden]> wrote:



> This paper proposes new keywords in the form iec60559_binaryN that can

> be used by new types proposed in P1468.

>



The paper's title is "Reserve good keywords for floating-point types." But

`iec60559_binary16` (which I had to reopen the PDF twice to double-check

the spelling of) is *100% absolutely not* a "good" keyword by *any*

metric. So, the paper is currently mis-titled.



I don't see any advantage to "reserving" these tokens for "future" use. Are

you worried that if you don't reserve them now, somebody might use them as

identifiers in real code? If that's your concern, then you should be

equally concerned that someone might *already* have used them as

identifiers in real code; in which case, you are proposing a breaking

change, and you should say so.



Rather than use `iec60559_binary16` for the new keyword, I suggest you

focus on using a keyword such as `__iec60559_binary16`, and then in

whatever future proposal gives it semantics, you can also propose



namespace std {

using float16 = __iec60559_binary16;

}



You don't need to "reserve" the keyword `__ie60559_binary16`, because it

already lives in implementation namespace: users cannot use it as an

identifier today. So, problem solved, right?



-Arthur



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