DIP1000: Walter's proposal to resolve ambiguity of ref-return-scope parameters

[Nick Treleaven]

On Saturday, 27 November 2021 at 01:10:37 UTC, zjh wrote:
> `C++` references, which look complicated, are actually simple.

Try reading the C++ spec, you will see the rules are far more 
complicated than D `ref`.

> And D `ref`, no matter what, I hate it.

Not helpful without giving a reason.

> A '&' is `Ok`,why not `use` it?

Because:
1. `ref` is not part of the type, so it is used less often and we 
don't need a sigil for it. It should stand out, it's important.
2. `&` is already an operator, it's best not to overload sigils.
3. C++ `&` (as a type constructor) is different from D `ref` 
semantically, so we should not use the same syntax to avoid 
introducing bugs when porting code from C++.

> There are too many 'attributes', can we delete? I'm writing 
> functions, not `attrs`.

If we are to support checked memory safety we need more 
attributes than C++, which doesn't support it. In general 
attributes could be inferred when the function body is there, but 
I think that is only implemented for templates ATM. Perhaps it 
would impact compile-times.