Re: [RFC] Explicit call-site send-by-ref syntax

On Tue, 30 Jul 2019 at 11:28, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote: > With that in mind, I don't see an issue with reusing the previous > call-time pass-by-ref syntax here. The & at the call-site still means that > the value is going to be passed by refrence (or error), so it's not like > someone who was around during the call-time pass-by-ref times would > misunderstand what the code does based on their prior knowledge. > > The only concern I see here is the emotional issue: Bringing & back as a > call-site annotation is an admission that the original migration of by-ref > passing has been badly botched: Yes, you removed those & at the call-site > for nothing. Yes, you shouldn't have been forced to do that! > > Mistakes happen and hindsight is 20/20. But we should own up to those > mistakes. > I think that's a reasonable summary. Could you add a short section to the RFC just acknowledging that history, and clarifying that this functionality is effectively a subset of the previously removed feature, but without its problems? You're right that it's more of an emotional reaction than a rational one, and shouldn't necessarily be a show-stopper IF we agree the proposed behaviour is a big enough gain. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]