Performance improvements for D / DMD compiler.

[Bill Baxter]

Dave wrote:
> Christian Kamm wrote:
>> If inout is used, it doesn't guarantee B) and even worse: I'm lying to 
>> anyone reading the function signature. A pointer will also require 
> 
> I agree, I don't like the thought of us having to use inout as an 
> optimization. That's not what it's meant for. Leaving aside the notion 
> of 'const' right now, I think 'byref' or some such would work fine for 
> this purpose. It tells a function user "this is passed by reference" and 
> is easily grep-able (unlike '&').
> 
> And a pointer will require the use of '&' at every call site instead of 
> 'byref' just once in the function definition.

So you're suggesting byref would be a synonym for inout?  And the 
compiler would treat it exactly like the current inout?  If the 
compiler's not going to be of any help in making sure that I don't 
change things that I don't mean to be changing, then I don't see much 
point in introducing a new keyword.

--bb