What should opAssign return, finally answered!

[Charles D Hixson]

downs wrote:
> Charles D Hixson wrote:
>> What I would expect is:
>>
>> class A
>> {
>>   A opAssign(A a)
>>   {
>>      // do stuff here
>>      return this;
>>   }
>> }
>>
>> but the only examples that I can find (variant.d) return *this ... which
>> leaves me quite confused.  Is this something special that Variant is
>> doing to allow it to handle multiple types (I didn't follow the
>> internals), or do I have what is supposed to be returned wrong?
> Variant is a struct.
> The this of a struct is a pointer.
> Ergo it has to dereference it, since opAssign returns the assignee for
> purposes of assignment chaining (a=b=c).
> 
> Hope that clears things up.
>  --downs
Thank you.  Yes, that explains my confusion.