On Thu, 09 May 2013 12:51:04 -0400, Peter Alexander
<peter.alexander...@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thursday, 9 May 2013 at 13:00:44 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
I have no problem with ref const accepting rvalues. As I understand
it, Andrei's objection (and this may be wrong/incomplete) is that then
there is no way to say you accept only lvalues as const ref and rvalues
via non-ref (for performance reasons). But I think there is no
technical reason preventing that with D.
Binding rvalues to ref is also dangerous, because the lifetime of the
rvalue is separate from that of the ref, and the ref has no way of
knowing when the rvalue will be destroyed.
The ref safety proposal will make it a runtime error to return a
reference to a destroyed object, but it would be better if we reduced
the opportunities for runtime errors if possible.
I agree, as long as it doesn't make it insanely difficult (i.e. current
situation) to make types that deal with rvalues.
Short answer: no matter what, we have to find a way to be able to write
one function that takes by ref, and accepts both rvalues and lvalues. If
ref const is that way, so be it. If auto ref is that way, so be it. If
it's plain-old ref, I'm fine with that too.
-Steve
