Does D provide automatic dereferencing for accessing members through pointers?

[H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 07:25:41PM +0000, Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
> This is something that has been on my mind since i discovered this the
> other day. Does D provide automatic dereferencing for accessing
> members through pointers?
[...]

Yes it does.

This is particularly useful in generic code where you neither know (nor
care) if the incoming type was a pointer or not; you can just use the
dot notation and the compiler will do the Right Thing(tm). I remember
trying to write C++ templates that will work for both pointer and
non-pointer types -- it was rather painful due to the distinction
between '.' and '->'. In D you just use '.' throughout and it Just
Works(tm).


T

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