Can't modify this

[Maxim Fomin via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Saturday, 28 June 2014 at 20:40:21 UTC, Ary Borenszweig wrote:
> This doesn't work:
>
> class Foo {
>   this() {
>     this = new Foo;
>   }
> }
>
> Error: Cannot modify 'this'
>
> However you can do this:
>
> class Foo {
>   this() {
>     auto p = &this;
>     *p = new Foo();
>   }
> }
>
> It even changes the value of this!
>
> Should that compile? I mean, it's the same as modifying 
> 'this'...

D language was not aimed toward preventing any attepmt to 
circumvent some hypothetical limitations (it does not even cope 
with things which it should definetely prevent). There are holes 
much - much worse. And changing value of this parameter is not a 
problem anyway, since it is possible to have typeid(this) != 
typeid of type of current method which is bigger problem than 
pointing to different value of same type.