On Saturday, 15 September 2012 at 18:05:55 UTC, Jonathan M Davis
wrote:
I'd argue that using null for indicating something other than
the lack of a
value is bad design. But there are plenty of cases where being
able to
indicate that there is no value is useful.
I agree.
And if a function requires that a
pointer or reference or array or whatever have a value, then
there's always
DbC or exceptions.
So why not clear this up at compile time if possible? Then you
can also easily distinguish between "really there" and "maybe
there" objects by passing either a reference or a pointer.
Just because someone can misuse a feature doesn't mean that
a feature shouldn't be there.
Why not set the "non-nullable references", which cannot be
misused, as default and still enable the "nullable references"
feature as optional by passing a pointer.
