Returning value by ref does not create a ref. Is this intentional?

[Dennis]

On Wednesday, 5 January 2022 at 05:38:45 UTC, Tejas wrote:
> The entire reason I wanted to get a `ref` was so that I can 
> avoid the `*` :(

I don't know what the real code behind the reduced example is, 
but maybe you can structure your code such that the subsequent 
modification `c = 10` happens in its own function. Then you can 
pass the result of `func(a)` to that function by `ref`.