While readin the documentation on D's ABI, I was puzzled by the following passage:

    Reference Types
    D has reference types, but they are implicit.
    For example, classes are always referred to
    by reference; this means that class instances
    can never reside on the stack or be passed
    as function parameters.

Does this mean that I cannot pass an object to a function?  It seems odd that functions would be restricted from having class-typed parameters. Thanks in advance for any information on this topic.

Regards,
Garett Bass
gtbass@studiotekne.com

"Garett Bass" <gtbass@studiotekne.com> wrote in message news:cdcugg$2094$1@digitaldaemon.com...
> While readin the documentation on D's ABI, I was puzzled by the following passage:
>
>     Reference Types
>     D has reference types, but they are implicit.
>     For example, classes are always referred to
>     by reference; this means that class instances
>     can never reside on the stack or be passed
>     as function parameters.
>
> Does this mean that I cannot pass an object to a function?  It seems odd that functions would be restricted from having class-typed parameters. Thanks in advance for any information on this topic.
>
> Regards,
> Garett Bass
> gtbass@studiotekne.com
>

It just means the class data itself isn't passed to functions, just a reference is:


Object myobject = new Object; // a reference to a new Object.

void foo(Object obj)
{
}

foo(myobject); // foo()'s obj is a reference to the same thing myobject
refers to.