On Sun, 09 Oct 2011 13:52:47 -0400, bearophile <bearophileh...@lycos.com>
wrote:
(I show this here because it's probably a silly idea, but it may a
chance to learn something.)
Do you like the idea of a POD that is always managed by reference, as
class instances?
ref struct Foo {}
static assert(Foo.sizeof == 1);
void main() {
Foo f1; // void reference
Foo f2 = new Foo; // by reference
}
It is as light as a struct, but you don't need to use the pointer syntax
to manage a Foo instance, the code is cleaner. There is no info field
inside a ref struct, so in some situations the destructor doesn't get
called, like regular structs.
You can achieve this with pImpl structs. I think the only difference is
the creation/destruction must be done via functions instead of new/GC.free.
-Steve
