Should opEquals be removed from object? (Was: Re: How to check for null references)

[Nathan Reed]

Robert Fraser wrote:
> This one seems to trip up a lot of new users. Is there some way (short of making it huge, red, and flashing) to make this somehow more obvious o the D webpage. I'm sure it trips up quite a few people who already know the rule, too (I don't do too much D work, and I've already been bitten once or twice).
> 
> I think the best way might be to issue a compiler error if an object doesn't have an opEquals() overload instead of providing a default implementation in object (like for all the other operator overloads). That would break a lot of existing code, though, but the compiler would help fix it rather than having it break silently.
> 

How about just issuing a warning if 'null' is on either side of an == sign?

Thanks,
Nathan Reed