Return by 'ref' problems...

[Peter Alexander]

On Friday, 4 May 2012 at 08:46:38 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
> On Friday, May 04, 2012 11:38:32 Manu wrote:
>> I try rearranging the syntax to make the first issue stop 
>> complaining:
>> 
>> ref const(Thing) func2() { return gThing; } // this seems to 
>> work now, but
>> i don't like the inconsistency...
>
> That's thanks to the nonsense that putting const on the 
> left-hand side of a
> member function is legal, making it so that you _must_ use 
> parens with const
> and return types for the const to apply to the return type 
> rather than the
> function.

It's not only legal, sometimes it's required, e.g. if you want 
type inference on a const member function.

class Foo
{
     auto fun() { ... } //ok
     auto fun() const { ... } // error, two storage classes
     fun() const { ... } // error, expected storage class before 
'foo'
     const fun() { ... } // correct!
}