Hiding class pointers -- was it a good idea?

[Bill Baxter]

Jason House wrote:
> Bill Baxter wrote:
>> Jason House wrote:
>>> I was thinking recently of an interesting syntax twist...  Always 
>>> require & when trying to get to an address, and use the raw variable 
>>> name and "." to refer to whatever is pointed to.  Obtaining an 
>>> address would require &.
>>>
>>> It's an interesting change, but would likely be too confusing to 
>>> switch over.  Somehow I bet even suggesting the idea will mark me as 
>>> a crack pot :)
>>
>> Well realistically none of this is likely to change anyway, so you're 
>> free to suggest anything you want.  :-)
>> I was thinking about something like that as well, though.  But 
>> couldn't really think how to make it useful.
>>
>> My thinking was that in D we have classes sort of "shifted" by one 
>> from structs
>>
>>         pointer-to-pointer   pointer   value
>> struct    &(&p)                &p        p
>> struct*    &p                   p       *p
>> class      &p                   p       N/A
>>
>> So instead of that make structs default to pointers too, to shift 
>> everything back to be the same:
>>
>>         pointer-to-pointer   pointer   value
>> struct#       &(&p)            &p        p
>> struct        &p                p       *p
>> class         &p                p       N/A
> 
> I was thinking of something more consistent.
> 
>         pointer-to-pointer   pointer   value
> struct         N/A             &p        p
> struct*        &&p             &p        p
> class          &&p             &p        p
> T              ???             &p        p

Oh, I see.  So you mean that no matter what, the compiler would figure 
out what dereferencing was necessary, and you always have to explicitly 
say whether you want a pointer or not.  Interesting.

So pointer math becomes pretty tedious for one.  Maybe that's ok.
And then what happens when you're given some T (which could be pointer 
to pointer to int, say) and you want dereference it one level further? 
And what about aliases?  If I have
alias int* intp;
alias int** intpp;
intp x;

Then x can simultaneously be described as int**, intp*, or intpp.

But why is struct pointer-to-pointer N/A.  Shouldn't the N/A be under 
'value' for class?

--bb