References in D

[Maxim Fomin]

On Saturday, 15 September 2012 at 12:38:53 UTC, Henning Pohl 
wrote:
> The way D is dealing with classes reminds me of pointers 
> because you can null them. C++'s references cannot (of course 
> you can do some nasty casting). So you can be sure to have a 
> valid well-defined object. But then there is always the 
> ownership problem which renders them more dangerous as they 
> seem to be. D resolves this problem using a garbage collector.
>
> So why not combine the advantages of C++ references "always 
> there" guarantee and D's garbage collector and make D's 
> references not nullable? If you want it to be nullable, you can 
> still make use of real pointers. Pointers can be converted to 
> references by implicitly do a runtime check if the pointer is 
> not null and references can be converted back to pointers.
>
> I guess you had good reasons about choosing the nullable 
> version of D references. Explain it to me, please.

Completely disagree. By the way, you are mixing references and 
classes.
struct S {}

void foo(ref S s); // cannot pass null pointer S* or null - 
"always there"