Re: Language design question

Shaun Flisakowski <flisakow@ricotta.cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Shaun Flisakowski <flisakow@ricotta.cs.wisc.edu> wrote:
>>It seems that with strong typing, there is no need for a dereferencing
>>operator, as the compiler could add these automatically. (I'd still
>>have an address-of operator)


> Thanks to everyone who replied. I've been (mostly) talked out
> of it, and will require a dereferencing operator for all calls
> except member selection, in which case the '.' will automatically
> add the derefences.


I'm coming into this thread very very late, but FWIW Stroustrup has
some interesting things to say about references (roughly,
automatically dereferenced pointers) in Design and Evolution of C++.
Specifically, he said that he had been bitten by Algol68 reseatable
references and would not allow such a facility in C++ -- once a
reference is initialized to a particular referent, it is not allowed
to change. (A loop-local reference can, however, refer to a different
referent on each iteration, since it is reborn and reinitialized on
each iteration.)


This prohibition on reseating is (almost) an automatic by-product of
the semantics of references; any attempt to modify the reference gets
referred to the referent, which then gets modified (if possible). I
say "almost," because real prohibition requires that there be no
aliases for the reference itself, by which one might reseat the
reference.


Tom Payne

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