Reference counted containers prototype

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 12/27/11 6:15 AM, Froglegs wrote:
> When I go to that link it just says
>
> Unknown Paste ID!
>
> Don't see any code anywhere.. hum
>
>
>
>
> What is wrong with value containers? They work great in C++, a container
> is such a basic thing that ref counting and whatnot is rarely if ever
> needed, and in the unlikely event you need to share a container,
> wrapping it with a smart pointer of some sort is easy enough in C++, let
> alone D with its better support for type aliasing.

Value containers are almost never used as values. Code that does 
manipulate them as values, e.g.

void fun(vector<int> v);

is technically correct but automatically suspicious and raises 
questions. (It only passes a code review at Facebook if the 
implementation of fun does need in fact a mutable temporary vector 
inside, which is rare.)

There is only one place where C++ value containers work well, and that's 
as members inside value objects. But then those objects in turn must be 
effectively manipulated as references...


Andrei