Time to kill T() as (sometimes) working T.init alias ?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, December 01, 2012 15:32:39 Walter Bright wrote:
> On 11/30/2012 3:31 PM, Mehrdad wrote:
> > If that's the case, then we need to get rid of postblits entirely.
> 
> The only justification I've ever been able to come up with for postblits
> is implementing a reference counting type.

Any struct which contains reference types needs them. For instance, a struct 
containing int[] needs to dup that array if it doesn't want to have the copy 
referring to the same elements as the original and therefore risk having them 
be mutated. Arrays with immutable elements don't have that problem, but those 
with mutable elements (and to some extent those with const) do have such a 
problem, as to structs with classes or structs which are reference types, etc. 
I'm surprised that you'd think that postblit constructors were only useful for 
implementing reference counting types. IMHO, the language would be crippled 
without a postblit or copy constructor for structs.

- Jonathan M Davis