const(Object)ref is here!

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Tue, 07 Dec 2010 09:05:20 -0500, Jason House  
<jason.james.house at gmail.com> wrote:

> Michel Fortin Wrote:
>> The point is that the 'ref' in in the 'b' and 'c' variable declaration
>> has the effect of changing the ref from B and C from const to mutable,
>> even for B where the ref was explicitly specified to be const. I was
>> wondering if some people would find that surprising, but if I
>> understand you well that's what you expect when seeing this, right?
>
> I've been wondering if it makes more sense for 'ref' to be a storage  
> class rather than some kind of type constructor. Doing that would make  
> the typedef's with ref be illegal. It'd also make foo!(const(T) ref) be  
> illegal as well as (const(T) ref)[]. As a storage class, it can only be  
> added to variable declarations.

IIUC, I think ref in this case is a type modifier.  There are other  
examples of keywords that are both storage classes and type modifiers  
(const, shared).

-Steve