Pass by reference

[Deewiant]

Regan Heath wrote:
> Deewiant Wrote:
>> 'ref' meaning what C++'s 'const foo&' is how I originally understood it,
>> but from all the discussion I've gathered that 'inout' will be deprecated
>> and then phased out after all. So 'ref' will be only the new name for
>> 'inout'.
>> 
>> I hope I'm wrong, I think 'inout' is more self-documenting than 'ref'.
> 
> I liked 'inout' better than 'ref' too.  I was against the initial proposal
> before I left for 6 months and when I got back, there it was!
> 
> 'inout' was originally intended to signal the intent of the function to "read
> from the parameter and write back to it".  Much like 'out' just meant "I will
> only write to this" and the default 'in' meant "I will only read this".
> 
> 'ref' however is an instruction to pass by reference, which is a whole other
> kettle of fish.  Yes, 'inout' has to pass by reference in order to carry out
> it's intention but that doesn't make it the same thing.
> 
> My original argument against adding anything more to the language was
> something along the lines of..
> 
> If you want to pass something by reference, why not pass a pointer to it.
> After all, in D, you can dereference a pointer in exactly the same way as you
> would the thing itself, eg.
> 
> struct A { int member; }
> void foo(A a) { a.member = 5; }
> void foo(A* a) { a.member = 5; }
> 
> notice that to dereference a struct passed by value, or a pointer to a struct
> you always use '.'
> 
> That said, the call site would look like foo(&a); instead of the cleaner
> foo(a)... which is perhaps why C++ added a pass-by-reference & to be used in
> place of the pointer * syntax.
> 
> Hmm.. idea;  why not allow foo(a) and automatically convert to foo(&a)
> internally if 'a' is not a pointer.  I mean, the compiler knows what 'a' is,
> it knows what 'foo' wants, why can't we have the syntax automatically, much
> like we do for dereferencing.
> 

We'd lose the ability to overload a function with both foo(A) and foo(A*), but
to be honest I can't think of a use case for that anyway. I like it! We could
lose 'ref' completely.

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