First Draft: ref For Variable Declarations

[Quirin Schroll]

On Wednesday, 1 May 2024 at 21:10:54 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 4/12/24 22:43, Walter Bright wrote:
>> https://github.com/WalterBright/documents/blob/984374ca885e1cb10c2667cf872aebc13b4c1663/varRef.md
>
> 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.

Can’t `ref T reference` simply be defined to have the same 
semantics as `T* _reference` and `reference` is a shorthand for 
`*_reference`?

> (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.)

Actually, you don’t because `null` references are valid in D.