Why can't we make reference variables?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday, August 29, 2012 04:40:17 anonymous wrote:
> On Wednesday, 29 August 2012 at 02:07:19 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
> 
> wrote:
> > On Wed, 29 Aug 2012 03:16:20 +0200
> > 
> > "Tommi" <tommitissari at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> On Wednesday, 29 August 2012 at 00:34:02 UTC, cal wrote:
> >> > On Wednesday, 29 August 2012 at 00:21:29 UTC, Tommi wrote:
> >> >> In this situation, I think, the most convenient and
> >> >> sensible thing to do is to make a reference to the data,
> >> >> and use that reference multiple times. We could make a
> >> >> pointer, but then we'd be stuck with the nasty syntax of
> >> > 
> >> >> dereferencing:
> >> > This works currently:
> >> > 
> >> > struct Test
> >> > {
> >> > 
> >> >     void foo() const
> >> >     {
> >> >     
> >> >         writeln("FOO");
> >> >     
> >> >     }
> >> > 
> >> > }
> >> > 
> >> > void main()
> >> > {
> >> > 
> >> >     immutable(Test)* ptr = new immutable(Test);
> >> >     ptr.foo();
> >> > 
> >> > }
> >> 
> >> Now, that's a surprise for someone coming from C++. But even
> >> though ptr looks like a reference variable in your example, it
> > 
> >> doesn't look like it at all in this example:
> > I've been primarily a D guy for years, and even I'm surprised
> > by that!
> > O_O
> 
> You didn't know that the dot operator does dereference? That's
> quite a big one to miss for years.

Yeah. I'm a bit confused about what's so suprising about that code.

- Jonathan M Davis