Why can't we make reference variables?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, August 29, 2012 02:21:28 Tommi wrote:
> Foreach loops can make reference variables, and function calls
> can do it for the parameters passed in. So, my question is,
> wouldn't it be better if we could, in general, make reference
> variables?

Not going to happen. Unfortunately though, I don't remember all of Walter's 
reasons for it, so I can't really say why (partly due to complications it 
causes in the language, I think, but I don't know). Use a pointer, 
std.typecons.RefCounted, a class, or make your struct a reference type (which 
would probably mean having the data held in a separate struct with a pointer 
to it in the outer struct). It's really not hard to have a type which is a 
reference type if that's what you really want. You just can't declare a ref to 
a variable as a local variable.

And really, the only two differences between using a pointer and being able to 
directly declare a reference like you can in C++ is the fact that a pointer 
can be null and that operations which don't use . require that you dereference 
the pointer first (e.g. ==). So, while there may be cases where being able to 
do something like

ref var = otherVar;

would be nice, it really doesn't buy you all that much.

- Jonathan M Davis