A new kind of managed lvalue pointer
It's already the evening and I haven't yet added anything to the C# compiler today, so here goes!
Properties have special support in C#, but they are not "first class". You can't get a reference to a property and pass it around as a value. Methods are
much better served in this regard: delegates are a way to treat a method as a value. But they are just objects with an Invoke method.
So all we need is an interface with a Value property. Objects supporting that interface can represent a single property that can be passed around like any other value:
Using pointer syntax as a shorthand for IEnumerable
Another quickie extension to C#. In the current language, a type declaration T! is shorthand for Nullable.
But equally important in modern C# programs are sequences of values, so a similar shorthand for IEnumerable would be ideal.
The asterisk symbol is underused (you can suffix a type with asterisk to make a pointer, but only in unsafe contexts), and
this was the choice made by the intriguing research language Cω
that influenced LINQ, so let's copy that:
Adding crazily powerful operator overloading to C# 6
I'm going to show you how to enable a new kind of operator overloading by adding exactly four (4) lines of code to a single file in the C# 6 compiler preview. Yes, I was surprised too!
After seeing the video of Anders Hejlsberg showing how easy it is to hack the new open source C# compiler, I had to give it a try.
My aim was (I assumed) a lot more ambitious and crazy than his demo. I thought it would take ages to figure out. But it was still tempting to aim high and actually implement a substantial new feature, because there are a few I've been wondering about over the years.