Extended Type Design.

[Benji Smith]

Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
> Benji Smith wrote:
>> Aha. In that case, what would you think of the declaration:
>>
>>   super const int MY_CONSTANT = 6;
>>
>> Since a value type doesn't have any pointers, it wouldn't make any 
>> sense to apply super-constness to it, right? Should that be a compiler 
>> error?
> 
> This should be a compiler error.
> 
> Andrei

Cool. That's what I'd expect.

Maybe rather than "super const", you could use "ref const" or "const*" 
or something that directly indicates that this form of constantness 
applies to the pointers rather than the values. If you use "ref" as a 
replacement for "inout", then the "ref" keyword would get some re-use.

Actually, though, I kind of like the idea of "const*"

   // Create a constant pointer from a mutable pointer
   const* int* myPointer = pMutableInt;

   // Or maybe like this:
   *const int* myPointer = pMutableInt;

What do you think of that? At least the asterisk provides a better clue 
to the functionality of the construct than an exclamation point would.

--benji