Why is it x.* but not x.& ?
I'm currently learning the language, and I was wondering about this design quirk.
Basically, if we have a variable x which is a pointer, we use x.* to get the value. This is much better than using * as a prefix, since the * might need to be applied to anything in the chain for complex access. I see the usecase.
For example something like
(*(*pointer_to_struct).struct_field_ptr).struct_field
is much more clearly written as
pointer_to_struct.*.struct_field_ptr.*.struct_field
But then it feels really inconsistent that we don't do the same for taking a reference with &. Sure, we only ever take one reference of the entire value, so we don't have the same problem as above, but:
We still have the issue that the & is not next to the value being dereferenced:
&some_ptr.*.some_array_struct_field[5].target
this takes the address of the target struct field, which is on the opposite side of the expression.
It also just feels inconsistent.
Additionally, I think the type declaration for a pointer should be &u8, not *u8. Since the & character is semantically equivalent to "address of", and * is more like "value at address".
Thoughts?