DUAL FEATURE REQUEST: let "with" take a struct pointer and evaluate to its parameter

[Bill Baxter]

downs wrote:
> The first part of the feature request is to allow "with" to take a pointer to a struct as a parameter.
> 
> This is for the sake of internal consistency; since you can already call
> methods on a struct pointer as if it was dereferenced, it makes sense to
> also be able to use "with" on it.

+1 definitely.  I think I've hit that one before too and it made me go 
huh? wha?

By the way same sort of huh? wha? comes from trying to define a structs 
opCmp to take a ref parameter.

> The second one arises from the following really cute idea ge0rg had in #d. Quote
> 
>>> <Ge0rG> so you want 'auto foo = with(new myStruct) { bar = 23; baz = 42; ... }'?
> 
> Things this breaks:
>  * None; as usual with my feature requests, it only affects behavior that is currently illegal.

> What do you think?

I'm -1 on that.

This is really not so hard to do:

   auto foo = new myStruct;
   with (foo) { ... }

And the new syntax only saves typing "foo" once.  Not worth it.

with() definitely could be a more useful beastie than it is, but I don't 
think that's the way, and that would just get in the way of what I think 
would be more useful growth opportunities like multiple with()

     with(auto foo=myStruct.accesor(); auto bar=yourStruct.thingy) {
     }

or non-scoped with(),

     with big_object;
     //like c++ "using", or alias big_object <.current namespace>;

or selective with().

     with(something : member1,member2) {
         member1 = 1; // gets something.member1
         member2 = 2; // gets something.member2
         member3 = 3; // error - didn't import member3
     }

Or maybe those duties could be given to alias or import.  I don't really 
care which, but with seems like the current underachiever of the bunch, 
so it seems like he could stand some more duties.

--bb