Re: Can I make a variable public and readonly (outside where was declared) at same time?

[via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Friday, 26 September 2014 at 17:52:58 UTC, bearophile wrote:
Marc Schütz:
Alternatively, you could create a union with a private and a 
public member with the same types, but I wouldn't recommend 
it. Besides, the members would need to have different names:

   class Foo {
       union {
           private int a;
           public int b;
       }
   }

You can call them a and a_. Why are you not recommending this 
solution? It looks cool (if it works).

Don't know, it feels hacky. And I really don't like the two 
different names, what's the point if I have to distinguish the 
two manually?

Now yet another way came to my mind:

    struct PrivatelyWritableProperty(T) {
        private T value_;
        const(T) get() const { return value_; }
        private void opAssign(T value) { value_ = value; }
        alias get this;
    }

    class Foo {
        PrivatelyWritableProperty!int a;
    }

But this looks even more fragile; there are probably some 
corner-cases where it doesn't work (for example, what happens 
when someone copies the containing struct?).