[cormacrelf]

From the article:

> I’d like a language that can contextually resolve enums, so I can just type something like calc_formula( ia, ib, is_gain ).

Swift does this and it should be considered for any new language design. Enum.variant can be shortened to .variant, including for variants with data in them, .variant(arg). Perfect solution, because the dot is an autocomplete trigger.

[henrikeh]

Fwiw, Ada does this too.

[Camillo]

Does this feature have a general name? Swift users seem to call it "dot syntax", which is not a good name. I want to google "C++ should have <this feature>" and find a proposal from 2013 that never moved forward, but "C++ should have dot syntax" is just silly.

[henrikeh]

Ada doesn't use the "dot syntax"; instead the enumeration literal is written as is without a dot. If I write:

    type Number_System is (Bin, Dec, Oct);
    type Month is (Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec);

    procedure Foo (A: Number_System; B: Month);

Then this is a valid call:

    Foo( Dec, Dec )

https://godbolt.org/z/eP5qMj3K1

When the type is explicit, the Ada standard calls this a "Qualified expression". But I would just say that it is a kind of type inference for enumerations.

https://www.adaic.com/resources/add_content/standards/05aarm...

[mayoff]

The official Swift name of the syntax is “implicit member expression”.

https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/ReferenceManual/Expression...

[cormacrelf]

It’s not just for enums in Swift, it’s applicable to all kinds of static functions, constants, initialisers. Has to be static (in the Swift/Java/etc sense) to work. Maybe “contextual members” or “contextual statics”. I like the latter.