> On Dec 19, 2015, at 7:12 PM, Dmitri Gribenko via swift-evolution > <swift-evolution@swift.org> wrote: > > On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 7:06 PM, Jordan Rose via swift-evolution > <swift-evolution@swift.org <mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org>> wrote: > -1 to using '&' in the declaration; it's a sigil that doesn't mean anything > as is. (I was originally on the side of using 'inout' at the call site as > well, i.e. "swap(inout x, inout y)", but it was considered too verbose.) > > I'd actually suggest that we reconsider this. '&' at the callsite has deep > associations with C semantics, and I have too frequently seen buggy code > using '&x' combined with one of the C interop implicit conversions to "get a > pointer" that the code stores in a variable somewhere. It is also hard to > explain to people that '&x' does not do what they want in that case, "& means > address-of, and it returns a pointer here, what do you mean I can't use it?"
I have always thought "&" was problematic for that reason. The question is whether it's problematic enough to change. -Dave
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