Next step on reference counting topics

[Andrei Alexandrescu via Digitalmars-d]

On 5/13/14, 6:41 AM, Dicebot wrote:
> On Monday, 12 May 2014 at 19:00:33 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> For that I'm proposing we start real work toward a state-of-the-art
>> std.refcounted module. It would include adapters for class, array, and
>> pointer types, and should inform language improvements for qualifiers
>> (i.e. the tail-const problem), copy elision, literals, operators, and
>> such.
>
> We don't have language tools to do it. Main problem with implementing
> reference counted pointers as structs is that you are forced to abandon
> polymorphism:
>
> class A {}
> class B : A {}
>
> void foo(RefCounted!A) {}
>
> void main()
> {
>      RefCounted!B b = new B();
>      foo(b); // no way to make it work
> }
>
> This severely limits applicability of such library solution, especially
> when it comes to something like exceptions.

"alias this" should be of help here. Could you please try it? Thanks! -- 
Andrei