On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 07:25:41PM +0000, Gary Willoughby via Digitalmars-d-learn wrote: > This is something that has been on my mind since i discovered this the > other day. Does D provide automatic dereferencing for accessing > members through pointers? [...]
Yes it does. This is particularly useful in generic code where you neither know (nor care) if the incoming type was a pointer or not; you can just use the dot notation and the compiler will do the Right Thing(tm). I remember trying to write C++ templates that will work for both pointer and non-pointer types -- it was rather painful due to the distinction between '.' and '->'. In D you just use '.' throughout and it Just Works(tm). T -- One reason that few people are aware there are programs running the internet is that they never crash in any significant way: the free software underlying the internet is reliable to the point of invisibility. -- Glyn Moody, from the article "Giving it all away"