On Monday, 15 February 2016 at 22:48:16 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
rears its head again :-)
Head Const is what C++ has for const, i.e. it is not
transitive, applies to one level only. D has transitive const.
What head const will do for us:
1. make it easy to interface to C++ code that uses const, as
currently it is not very practical to do so, you have to resort
to pragma(mangle)
2. supports single assignment style of programming, even if the
data is otherwise mutable
The downside is, of course, language complexity.
Maybe you can get away with adding "mutable", which is needed for
intrusive ref counting as well:
C++:
Type * const ptr;
struct ConstType {
mutable int rc;
}
D:
const mutable(Type)* ptr;
struct ConstType {
mutable(int) rc;
}
