DIP23 draft: Fixing properties redux

[Andrej Mitrovic]

On 2/6/13, Jonathan M Davis <jmdavisProg at gmx.com> wrote:
> That's why some of us have suggested
> making it so that you can mark variables with @property.

What Jonathan means is this:

struct S
{
    int var;  // modifiable, can take address
}

Now suppose later you want to turn var into a property:

struct S
{
    @property int var();
    @property void var(int);
}

This potentially breaks code if the user-code was using a pointer to
the public var field in the previous version of your library.

So instead we should have the ability to annotate fields with @property:

struct S
{
    @property int var;  // modifiable, can *not* take address
}

There's no run-time cost, but it disallows taking the address of var,
and it allows you to introduce property functions in the future
without breaking user-code.