Error: xxx is not an lvalue

[Unknown W. Brackets]

I've always though of arrays and associative arrays as structs (which 
really is what they are.)  Thinking that way, this behavior makes exact 
sense - down to .length being unchangeable and associative arrays being 
unchangeable.

I mean, you wouldn't want to make it work the way you suggest by making 
arrays and associative arrays simply pointers to their current structs 
(just like a class would be.)  You could make such a class easily 
yourself, anyway.

If you are right, I guess the right solution would be to make the ref 
implicit when returning (or, I suppose, passing?) such arrays and 
associative arrays.  But that seems wrong to me too, and wouldn't come 
free (speaking of efficiency) either.

-[Unknown]


Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Sun, 03 May 2009 05:25:09 -0400, Unknown W. Brackets 
> <unknown at simplemachines.org> wrote:
> 
>> This code works fine (D 2.x only):
>>
>> class Test
>> {
>>    private int[int] _testMap;
>>    public ref int[int] testMap() {return _testMap;}
>> }
>>
>> void main()
>> {
>>    Test test = new Test();
>>    test.testMap[0] = 1;
>> }
>>
>> Note the "ref".  Otherwise, a value is returned which is not 
>> modifiable.   This will also fix test.array.length.  Nothing wrong 
>> here, no creepy bad temporary property problems.
> 
> The original code should work, this is a problem.  An AA is not a value 
> type.
> 
> -Steve