Ref and class function calls?

[John Colvin]

On Tuesday, 16 April 2013 at 14:57:11 UTC, Tofu Ninja wrote:
> On Tuesday, 16 April 2013 at 14:33:21 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
>> A member function cannot modify it's own 'this' pointer.
>>
>> However, a free function can do it happily, which when 
>> combined with UFCS gives you the same syntax and behaviour:
>>
>> class A {
>> 	//......
>> }
>>
>> void replace(ref A a)
>> {
>> 	a = new A();
>> }
>>
>> void main() {
>> 	A a = new A();
>> 	A b = a;
>> 	assert(b is a);
>> 	b.replace();
>> 	assert(!(b is a));
>> }
>>
>> http://dpaste.dzfl.pl/147f69e1
>
> Yes... this is what I feared. I knew I could do it like that 
> but I was hoping a more elegant solution was available, seems 
> like bad design to have a function that is fully intended to be 
> a class function but not actually be able to declare it within 
> the class block.

I would argue that it is better as a separate function.

Having a member function that reassigns 'this' seems a long way 
from least-surprise (although with UFCS the user might be none 
the wiser anyway).