Why can't we define re-assignable const reference variable?

[Robert Fraser]

Janice Caron Wrote:

> On 17/02/2008, Robert Fraser <fraserofthenight at gmail.coim> wrote:
> > s1 = s2; // Okay
> > c1 = c2; // Okay
> > s1.x = 5; // Not okay
> > c1.x = 5; // Not okay
> >
> > When I proposed this, NOBODY agreed with me (that is, everybody who responded wanted structs/classes to act differently for generic programming purposes).
> 
> Isn't that rather because modifying s1.x modifies s1?

Technically, yes. But what I was (and still am) campaigning for is syntax changes where by "struct S" can be changed to "class X" and no client code will be broken at all. Structs/classes should behave differently from an implementation perspective (not like C++), so for example structs are data types/stack allocated and don't support inheritance, but they should be usable in roughly the same way by clients. This removes the decision from the API for most purposes.