Uniform Function Call Syntax (UFCS) or Uniform Calling Syntax (UCS) or sometimes Universal Function Call Syntax is a

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming l ...

feature in D and

Nim Nim is a mathematical two player game. Nim or NIM may also refer to: * Nim (programming language) * Nim Chimpsky, a signing chimpanzee Acronyms * Network Installation Manager, an IBM framework * Nuclear Instrumentation Module * Negative index met ...

that allows any function to be called using the syntax for method calls (as in

object-oriented programming Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of ...

), by using the receiver as the first parameter, and the given arguments as the remaining parameters. UFCS is particularly useful when function calls are chained (behaving similar to

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s, or the various dedicated

operator Operator may refer to: Mathematics * A symbol indicating a mathematical operation * Logical operator or logical connective in mathematical logic * Operator (mathematics), mapping that acts on elements of a space to produce elements of another ...

s available in

functional language In computer science, functional programming is a programming paradigm where programs are constructed by applying and composing functions. It is a declarative programming paradigm in which function definitions are trees of expressions that ...

s for passing values through a series of expressions). It allows free-functions to fill a role similar to extension methods in some other languages. Another benefit of the method call syntax is use with " dot-autocomplete" in IDEs, which use type information to show a list of available functions, dependent on the context. When the programmer starts with an argument, the set of potentially applicable functions is greatly narrowed down, aiding

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Examples

Nim programming language

type Vector = tuple , y: int proc add(a, b: Vector): Vector = (a.x + b.x, a.y + b.y) let v1 = (x: -1, y: 4) v2 = (x: 5, y: -2) # all the following are correct v3 = add(v1, v2) v4 = v1.add(v2) v5 = v1.add(v2).add(v4)

D programming language

import std.stdio; int first(int[] arr) int[] addone(int[] arr) void main()

C++ proposal

Proposals for a unification of member function and free function calling syntax have been discussed from the early years of C++ standardization. Glassborow (2004) proposed a Uniform Calling Syntax (UCS), allowing specially annotated free functions to be called with member function notation. It has more recently been proposed (as of 2016) for addition to C++ by

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and Herb Sutter, to reduce the ambiguous decision between writing free functions and member functions, to simplify the writing of templated code. Many programmers are tempted to write member functions to get the benefits of the member function syntax (e.g. " dot-autocomplete" to list member functions); however, this leads to excessive

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between classes.

Rust usage of the term

Until 2018 it was common to use this term when actually referring to
qualified/explicit path syntax
' and most commonly the

'': because it's possible to have several traits defining the same method implemented on the same struct, a mechanism is needed to disambiguate which trait should be used. Member functions can also be used as free functions through a qualified (namespaced) path. The term UFCS is incorrect for these uses, as it allows using methods as (namespaced) free functions, but not using free functions as methods.

References