Properties and Copy Constructors

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Thu, 06 Aug 2009 18:08:00 -0400, Chad J  
<chadjoan at __spam.is.bad__gmail.com> wrote:

> So I dug up Andrei's thread that mentioned something about properties
> that hasn't been discussed as of recent: expensive copy semantics.
>
...
> Towards the end of the discussion Steven Schveighoffer mentioned that
> this need to acquire and release is dictated by the type being used in
> the property, not by the property itself.  Thus it is the type's
> responsibility to make decisions about how it should be
> moved/swapped/acquired/released.
...
>
> Now I'm assuming the ref return and ref passing of these BigInts doesn't
> invoke their copy-constructors.  Is there any reason this can't work?


Yeah, I think that's exactly what I was thinking.  If a struct controls  
its copy semantics, you can avoid aliasing problems, and use reference  
properties for doing swap-like operations.

-Steve