With the #N syntax, Redis is getting dangerously close to having C-struct-typed fields (i.e. product types with a known bit-level encoding.)

I could imagine a STRUCT LOAD command (like SCRIPT LOAD) to push a struct definition to the server; and then STRUCT GETFIELD and STRUCT SETFIELD commands to manipulate the structs. The GETFIELD and SETFIELD commands would just boil down to the same BITFIELD command after dereferencing. (Heck, Redis could probably cheaply tag the fields with their struct definition, and then you could GET/SETBYFIELD would be polymorphic.)

...thinking about this more, this is possible now, isn't it? The struct-definition loader command, and the dereferencing commands, can all just be Lua functions passed to EVAL. The struct definitions could be loaded into a sorted set; the dereferencing commands would read from that set and then translate your query into a call to this BITFIELD command to do the work.

Anyone care to implement this silliness? :)