On Thursday, 2 August 2012 at 05:36:37 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
Using a class implies an extra level of indirection, and the
other issue is the only point to using a class is if you're
going to derive from it and override its methods. I don't see
that for a Token.
Use pass-by-ref for the Token.
You'll always have an extra layer of indirection if you aim not
to pass by value. By only exposing a pointer/class reference you
make it impossible to do the wrong thing by implicitly copying
the struct; and if we have a struct which is only ever meant to
be used through a pointer, we're better off using a class.
Of course, if we can trim the size of the struct sufficiently I'm
all for using a value type; then we would also lose the two-word
overhead all classes have (but really shouldn't have to have; the
monitor should only be on synchronized classes and we wouldn't
have to force a vpointer if Object wasn't bloated, but that's an
argument for another day).
