Bug 2785 – Interfaces should be able to require non-member functions

This should work: interface Foo { extern void bar(int, Foo, double); } meaning that a non-member function bar should exist that accepts an int, the implementor of Foo, and a double.

I agree with the suggestion, but why not 'static'?

(In reply to comment #1) > I agree with the suggestion, but why not 'static'? > static still implies member function.

OK, then maybe I'm not understanding what you're proposing. When I see "member function" I think "a function meant to be called on an instance of a class" as opposed to on the class itself. (I'd love to see 'abstract static' methods, which is what I thought this was proposing.) Are you saying that when a class implements Foo, there must be a function void bar(int, Foo, double) accessible from that scope? What horrid things are you planning on doing with that? ;)

(In reply to comment #0) I like the concept of extern functions in this concept, though it does rise questions of what scopes/modules are used for match searching. However, the use of Foo to mean the class name seems like the wrong keyword. What if I truly wanted a function that took a Foo? Also, it makes these function definitions behave differently than definitions outside the interface. Perhaps 'super' or 'typeof(this)'?

I'm dropping this because introspection seems to be a better path to achieving such requirements.