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

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

On Thursday, 31 May 2012 at 12:29:21 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> On Thu, 31 May 2012 08:27:17 -0400, Sandeep Datta 
> <datta.sandeep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>>
>>> If we removed the requirement for the ampersand, along with 
>>> requiring parentheses for non-property functions, code which 
>>> expected to call the function without parentheses would 
>>> silently compile, but not do what was intended.
>>
>>
>> Consider this...
>>
>> float handleRequest() {
>>  return 1.0f;
>> }
>>
>> float x = handleRequest; //compilation error
>>
>> or
>>
>> auto x = handleRequest;
>>
>> writefln("%f", x); //compilation error
>
> What about:
>
> handleRequest;

That doesn't compile now, if handleRequest is a function pointer 
(or any other variable):

    Error: var has no effect in expression (handleRequest)

A much bigger problem is implicit conversions to bool, which are 
used everywhere:

   if (handleRequest) { ... }
   assert (handleRequest);

Now, they test the result of handleRequest.  After the proposed 
change they test the function pointer.

If this change were to happen we'd need a loooong period between 
parentheses becoming mandatory for non-properties and dropping 
the & operator.  We're talking years here.  It's totally not 
worth it.

-Lars