On Monday, 9 June 2025 at 07:24:41 UTC, confuzzled wrote:
Hello community,
Is it possible to accomplish the following using ref instead of
pointers? If so, please share an example.
```d
// Represents our Backtester engine
struct Engine
{
// It STORES a pointer to its data source. This is its
"memory".
const(DataSource)* dataSource;
// The run method USES the stored pointer.
void run()
{
writeln("Engine running...");
if (dataSource is null)
{
writeln(" Error: Data source not configured!");
return;
}
// We access the data through the remembered pointer.
foreach (i, val; dataSource.data)
{
writef(" Processing data point %d: %d\n", i, val);
}
}
}
A ref cannot be a member of a type. But ref can be returned by a
function.
So what you want is a *property* function:
```d
struct Engine
{
private const(DataSource)* _dataSourceStorage;
this(ref const(DataSource) dataSource)
{
this._dataSourceStorage = &dataSource;
}
@property ref dataSource() => *_dataSourceStorage;
... // rest the same
}
...
void main()
{
auto myData = DataSource([10, 20, 30]);
auto myEngine = Engine(myData); // initialize via ref
...
}
```
-Steve
