Hiding class pointers -- was it a good idea?

[Bill Baxter]

Gregor Richards wrote:
> #1 advantage of making them always by-value: Ridiculously inconsistent 
> use of by-value passing, ref passing and pointer passing.
> 
> void foo(Thing a);
> void foo(ref Thing a);
> void foo(Thing *a);
> 
> Wait, that's not an advantage at all, that's C++.

I don't get your point.  Each of those things has different uses in C++.

// if Thing is small/PoD and you don't want changes to affect caller
void foo(Thing a);

// if Thing is bigger, you want to allow caller-visible changes, and you 
  require calling with non-null
void foo(ref Thing a);

// same as above, but you want to allow null too
void foo(Thing *a);


The ref-can't-be-null thing may not hold for D, but it's true of C++.

--bb