DIP23 draft: Fixing properties redux

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 04 Feb 2013 18:18:16 -0500, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 2/4/2013 6:05 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Couldn't AddressOf use "&(" + exp + ")"?
>>
>> I thought more about this. The problem remains even without @property,  
>> due to
>> optional parens in function invocation. Consider:
>>
>> ref int fun() { ... }
>> auto p1 = &fun;
>> auto p2 = &(fun);
>> auto p3 = &(fun());
>>
>> What are the types of the three? The optional parens in invocation  
>> require some
>> disambiguation. I think the sensible disambiguation is to have &fun  
>> take the
>> address of fun and the other two take the address of fun's result.
>
> The only time it is valid to take the address of a function's return  
> value is if the function returns a ref.
>
> But I also would think that it's a suspicious practice to take the  
> address of a ref. We've disallowed it in other circumstances, why allow  
> it here? If a function intends for someone to take the address of the  
> return ref, shouldn't the function return a pointer instead?

I'd agree with you if we could have ref variables.  In some cases, taking  
the address is the ONLY option.

-Steve