References in D

[Alex Rønne Petersen]

On 15-09-2012 15:24, Henning Pohl wrote:
> On Saturday, 15 September 2012 at 12:49:23 UTC, Russel Winder wrote:
>> On Sat, 2012-09-15 at 14:44 +0200, Alex Rønne Petersen wrote:
>> […]
>>>
>>> Anyway, it's too late to change it now.
>>
>> I disagree. There are always opportunities to make changes to things,
>> you just have manage things carefully.
>
> I don't know if people really use the ability of references being null.
> If so, large amounts of code will be broken.
>
> The best way to stay tuned for that change is to always pray references
> to be valid, thus to do no explicit runtime checks.
>
> Are you using reference runtime checks in your current code?

D has null references, so I use them. I would prefer option types, but 
they are too verbose in D as things stand.

-- 
Alex Rønne Petersen
alex at lycus.org
http://lycus.org