On Friday, 4 May 2012 at 20:00:10 UTC, Jacob Carlborg wrote:
ref int a (); const int b (); const(int) c ();
I fully understand the difference, it's a common source of confusion. But it also makes perfect sense if you know the rules about function attributes. I don't think it's optimal, but changing it now would break a lot of code, it cannot happen for D2. The best we can do is make 'ref' work properly as a function attribute by allowing it to occur after the parameter list.
'inout' also has this problem, but opposite; sometimes putting it in front of the member function makes it behave differently. I can't remember if there is a bug report for it (probably is... or maybe not, because nobody even expected inout to work at all a couple of versions ago).
Perhaps it would be better if "a" was declared like this: ref(int) a ();
ref is not a type qualifier, I think that would be even more confusing. It would be completely out of sync with the rest of the language.
