[Nickle] references in structured values

[Keith Packard]

Around 1 o'clock on May 16, Bart Massey wrote:

> I'm having some issues with references in structured values
> (arrays and structs).  I guess x.m is implicitly
> dereferenced at some point before its address is taken.
> This seems bad: you sometimes want to initialize these things
> by passing their address.  Am I confused?

Yes, you have been confused by ref typed variables.  But, there's also a 
bug...

Remember that a ref type (&int) is semantically equivalent to a pointer 
type (*int); the only difference is that the compiler 'sugars' all 
variables of that type:

	int	i;		int	i;
	int	j;		int	j;
	&int	r;		*int	p;
	*&int	pr;		**int	pp;

	&r = &i;		p = &i;

	r = 12;			*p = 12;

	pr = & &r;		pp = &p;

	*pr = &j;		*pp = &j;

Except that 'pr = & & r;' doesn't work.  That's because the type of '&r' 
is &int, and so the type of '& (&r)' is *also* '&int' because of the 
sugaring rules above.  I've fixed this by changing the type of the 
expression '&r' from '&int' to '*int' which means the compile skips the 
sugar when computing the outer & operator.

I think that's right.

-keith


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