Call site 'ref'

[dsimcha]

On 1/15/2012 8:36 AM, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I don't know how many times I've made the mistake of passing a local
> variable to a function which takes a 'ref' parameter. Suddenly, local
> variables/fields are just mutating out of nowhere, because it's not at
> all obvious that a function you're calling is taking a 'ref' parameter.
> This is particularly true for std.utf.decode().
>
> Yes, I realize I could look at the function declaration. Yes, I could
> read the docs too. But that doesn't prevent me from forgetting that a
> function takes a 'ref' parameter, and then doing the mistake again. The
> damage is done, and the time is wasted.
>
> I think D should allow 'ref' on call sites to prevent these mistakes.
> For example:
>
> string str = ...;
> size_t pos;
> auto chr = std.utf.decode(str, ref pos);
>
> Now it's much more obvious that the parameter is passed by reference and
> is going to be mutated.
>
> Ideally, this would not be optional, but rather *required*, but I
> realize that such a change would break a *lot* of code, so that's
> probably not a good idea.
>
> Thoughts?
>

This would break UFCS severely.  The following would no longer work:

auto arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
arr.popFront();  // popFront takes arr by ref