With block proposal

[Bill Baxter]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2009 at 10:13 AM, Michiel
Helvensteijn<m.helvensteijn.remove at gmail.com> wrote:
> Daniel Keep wrote:
>
>>> you can also say
>>>
>>> { auto w = a; w.x = f(); w.x = g(); }
>>>
>>> or similar.
>>
>> Unless a is a value-type member of something else.
>
> That's why I said 'or similar'. Doesn't D have anything to create an
> alias/reference to a value-type variable?

Yes you can do

 alias a w; w.x = f(); w.x = g();

But you can't do

  alias a.b.c w; ...

And you can't create a ref local variable.
But you can make a pointer local variable, of course, and for most
purposes that's just as good since there's no need for -> in D.

If structs get real constructors I'll be ok with saying goodbye to with().
It's just too useful for writing opCall pseudo-constructors:

static T opCall() {
    T R; with(R) {
         x = 0;
         y = 1;
         z = getZValue();
    } return R;
}

--bb