I've always though of arrays and associative arrays as structs (which
really is what they are.) Thinking that way, this behavior makes exact
sense - down to .length being unchangeable and associative arrays being
unchangeable.
I mean, you wouldn't want to make it work the way you suggest by making
arrays and associative arrays simply pointers to their current structs
(just like a class would be.) You could make such a class easily
yourself, anyway.
If you are right, I guess the right solution would be to make the ref
implicit when returning (or, I suppose, passing?) such arrays and
associative arrays. But that seems wrong to me too, and wouldn't come
free (speaking of efficiency) either.
-[Unknown]
Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Sun, 03 May 2009 05:25:09 -0400, Unknown W. Brackets
<[email protected]> wrote:
This code works fine (D 2.x only):
class Test
{
private int[int] _testMap;
public ref int[int] testMap() {return _testMap;}
}
void main()
{
Test test = new Test();
test.testMap[0] = 1;
}
Note the "ref". Otherwise, a value is returned which is not
modifiable. This will also fix test.array.length. Nothing wrong
here, no creepy bad temporary property problems.
The original code should work, this is a problem. An AA is not a value
type.
-Steve
