Taking address of properties

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/7/13 2:13 PM, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> On Thu, 07 Feb 2013 13:05:50 -0500, Robert <jfanatiker at gmx.at> wrote:
>
>> Properties provide a means of access control to fields. (Range checks,
>> only readable, only writable, triggering a signal on change, ...)
>>
>> So as posted a few times, taking the address of the ref return value of
>> a property is of no value at all. If you want someone to be able to take
>> the address of a field, you should make it simply public (without
>> @property), because the @property accessor methods won't gain you
>> anything in this case.
>
> @property ref T front(T[] arr) { return arr[0];}
>
> Not being able to take an address of an array's front element is not a
> viable solution. The array range's business is not to restrict access to
> the first element, it's simply to conform to a certain API.

I think the point we're making here with T* vs ref T is that most good 
work could and should be done with references that have provable 
scoping. Needing the actual address of something should not be casual.

Andrei