If you want to use dr-ignore-state(s) or other dr library calls, then you need to specify dynamic rule names as strings. This is undesirable, since the compiler will not check if these rules exist at all (typos, updates, etc). This might be acceptable for small programs, but in the Dryad reclassifier I don’t even know all the dynamic rules that exist.

I already dislike the fact that I have to list the dynamic rules again (easy to forget one etc), and the possibility of these strings getting out of sync with the actual dynamic rule names worries me even more.

For this, I would like to propose a language construct for referring to dynamic rules, which checks if the dynamic rule names exist in the program.

Example:
rules(ReclassifySimpleInScopeTypeName, QualifyTypeName)

This could be translated to a list of strings after checking these names.

Submitted on 1 March 2006 at 19:43