Get pointer or reference of an element in Array(struct)

[David Nadlinger]

On Saturday, 9 December 2017 at 06:46:27 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran 
wrote:
> Thanks. Just curious why reference can't be obtained here. 
> Saves nasty null checks in most places.

D simply doesn't have a (C++-style) concept of references as part 
of the type. Arguments can be passed by reference - hence the 
`ref` keyword -, but "free" references don't exist in the 
language.

The ref in foreach loop variables can be conceptually thought of 
as a parameter to the loop body as well. (For opApply-based 
iteration, the loop body indeed gets turned into a function; for 
"plain" iteration the compiler AST internally has special ref 
variables, but they are not visible to the language.)

  -David