From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-05-07T21:36:30+09:00
Subject: Re: object reference handle (like perl's reference to scalar)

On 5/7/05, Eric Mahurin <eric_mahurin@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Maybe ref= should be called deref=. But there it is.
> I really don't like the idea of your references looking like the
> underlying object. This just confuses things. A reference is a
> reference and you can get/set the object that it references. If
> you want to get info about the object that it references, just get
> it and query it by getting it from the reference. Why muddy what
> the reference is?

Because no one else is going to write their libraries to check for
reference holders.

Which means that the use of a Ref is, at best, extremely limited.

I won't personally use a library that requires that I use a Ref, as
I find it a concept that is alien to Ruby -- and introduces a really
ugly syntax, to boot. (The C/C++ &foo, *foo, foo->bar looks a lot
cleaner by comparison than foo[].bar)

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca