dot operators on functions

I don't know if this is possible, but are there any languages where you can use a dot operator on a function per se. I'll give an example.

function blah returns type2

type 2 looks like this

{ data

number }

when I call blah are there any languages that support blah.number, so that when it makes the function call and gets the type2, it then grabs number and returns that. I'm sorry if this is an obvious answer, but I couldn't e开发者_如何学编程ven think of a good way to word it to google it.

I just ran into a situation that would be convienient to have that, rather then make an intermediate variable you just make sure you return the type.

I know that I could add a "get" function that would get the specific number variable from that type, but that's an additional function someone would have to add so I am excluding that as a option (as I can just return the type and access using a variable there isn't really a dire need for a new function).

EDIT: I feel like an idiot.....

EDIT # 2: For some reason I had it in my head that you couldn't do dot operations on functions, (I don't care about the parentheses I was just trying to give an example)

Edit # 3: Is there a name for this or is it still just a dot operation?

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Well this works in C if the function returns a struct like this:

struct retval {
    char * data;
    int number;
};

retval foo() {
    // do something and then return an instance of retval
}

// call
int a = foo().number;

I would like to know if there is any language that does not support something like this.

About Edit #3 The name would generally be member access, since all you do is to access a member of the return value. This could differ across languages though.

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In most languages you can do Blah().Member ... the typing of a pair of parentheses won't kill you, will it? These languages include C, C++, Java, C# etc.

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Yep, to the best of my knowledge, most modern languages (if not most languages in general) support this.

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Maybe I misunderstand you, but in most languages, you can already do that.

in java for example, if you have a function get_foo() returning an object of type foo, and foo is defined as

Class Foo{
  public int bar;
  public double baz;
}

you can do get_foo().bar returning bar

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Any language that allows a function to return an object/struct will support that... And languages like Ruby (where the () are optional) will make it exactly like you tiped (blah.number instead of blah().number).

Another way of avoiding the parentheses is using a property or an equivalent idiom... So C#, VB.NET and Python would also allow that.

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If you want to make a new function out of an existing one, it's possible with lambda expressions. In C#, for example, it'd be var fooblah = (x => foo(x).blah); Obviously, if there's an overloading available in the language, you can't do it without giving a list of arguments.

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Er...you mean, like a returning a class or a struct?

In C#

private class Blah
{
   public string Data {get; set;}
   public int Number {get; set;}
}

public Blah DoSomething() 
{
   return new Blah{Data="Data",Number=1};
}