On Wednesday, 3 October 2012 at 16:58:52 UTC, Maxim Fomin wrote:
How much code would be broken by moving nullable references
from current state to "question mark notation"?
That's another question :]
I expect that non-nullable class objects (called references
here) addition (if there is no objections to idea in general)
would not break much code and would not request vast syntax
changes. And it likely can be done by still defaulting to
nullable references. For example, it can be done with the help
of @nonnullable (like immutable) type qualifier and semantic
check of operations involving references with such qualifier.
Sounds like a deal for now, but @nonnullable will only work with
class references and anything else will be an error. So directly
attaching it to the type (like the questionmark) makes more sense.
Anyway, my estimation of probability of accepting constructions
like "type&", "type*?", etc and defaulting to non-null
references is very low, at least for D2.
That's right, but let's use the youth of the language to change
this. I guess many will hate me if we do so.
