Is the address-of operator (&) really needed?

[Dejan Lekic]

On Thu, 31 May 2012 08:40:51 -0700, Jonathan M Davis wrote:

> On Thursday, May 31, 2012 11:36:47 Sandeep Datta wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I was going through some sample code online and came across the
>> following code fragment...
>> 
>> 	listenHttp(settings, &handleRequest); //Where handleRequest is a
>> function
>> 
>> My question to you is (as the title says) is the address-of operator
>> (&) really needed here? Wouldn't it be better to consider handleRequest
>> to be a reference to the actual function? I think this will make the
>> system consistent with the way variables work in D. IMO this will bring
>> functions/delegates closer to being first class objects in D.
>> 
>> What do you think?
> 
> 1. It's needed so that you can call it when calling C code.
> 
> 2. Just because ref is often better than a pointer doesn't mean that
> it's never valuable to be able to pass a pointer to a variable.
> 
> 3. ref doesn't work with variadic templates very well. Take a look a
> std.getopt.getopt. It takes pointers, not refs, and there isn't a way to
> make it take refs.
> 
> 4. & is useful for getting function pointers.
> 
> There is _zero_ roason to get rid of & IMHO.
> 
> - Jonathan M Davis

+1 100%

I would add that "fptr = &function;" makes it _clear_ what is going on 
there, otherwise I would have to go and find what "function" is...

-- 
Dejan Lekic
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  http://dejan.lekic.org