ideas about ranges

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Fri, 22 May 2009 16:40:55 -0400, Andrei Alexandrescu  
<SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:

> Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> ref accomplishes all of this, except you can't get at the underlying  
>> pointer to do things like compare to null or rebind.  Maybe we simply  
>> need some new operators to get at the ref addresses.
>
> Defining null references has been on the table too. I wrote a paragraph  
> about them and then deleted it in fear of major aggravation.
>
> There's no need for new syntax. We can easily define things such that  
> you can return *null when a reference is expected and checking  
> &(r.popNext()) is null to figure out what's happening. I think it's bad  
> design though.

&(r.popNext()) still gets you back to pointer-land.  Might as well return  
a pointer.

Also, I don't even think this works, because you can either check for null  
or get the data, but not both:

ref T t; // syntax error, no?

while(&(t = r.popNext()) !is null)
{
}

doesn't work because you're not rebinding t.

-Steve