First Draft: ref For Variable Declarations

[Timon Gehr]

On 4/12/24 22:43, Walter Bright wrote:
> https://github.com/WalterBright/documents/blob/984374ca885e1cb10c2667cf872aebc13b4c1663/varRef.md

I am not sure how, but I had missed this thread so far. I am very much 
in favor, I have wished for this many times over the years. I think the 
only risk is implementation bugs in safety checks. The DIP seems a bit 
incomplete in this department, e.g., it does not say what happens when 
you take the address of a `ref` local. Maybe it can point to some prior 
art, but just stating that it cannot be returned seems neither 
sufficient nor necessary.

(Of course, it would be even better if fields could also be `ref`, but 
then you get into initialization safety. This is a general soundness 
problem in the current language though.)