Re: Return by reference

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On 2017-12-17 15:38, Jere wrote:
> Implicit dereference has gone a long way in providing
> a sort of return by reference capability in Ada.

I don't think this is a right way anyway. A great number of application 
interested in in-place semantics would rather like to implement 
referential semantics of their own, possibly unrelated to any access 
type at all. Consider as example a DB interface:

    Table.Select (Column) := Value;

There is simply to object to get access to.

Using iterators and holders is one method, which is as you have noticed 
quite clunky, requires helper types obscuring everything, and still 
requiring access types.

I would prefer language-assisted delegation to a getter/setter pair:

    function Getter (To : Container) return Element;
    procedure Setter (To : in out Container; Item : Element);

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de