Noncopyable structs and enums as “reference types”, not just performance boosters?

[jeremyabannister (Jeremy Bannister)]

@Jumhyn

I think the idea of reference type instances having unique identities is a pretty fundamental concept, and that also applies to values of noncopyable types.

Right, this is what I’m getting at.

@Max_Desiatov

I'm not sure if a comparison to reference types is suitable. In fact, I'd use non-copyable types in places where I want a behavior opposite to reference types

I know that noncopyable types are very much not reference types, but because of the parallels (specifically this one mentioned by @Jumhyn) I became curious about the answer to this question:

@jeremyabannister

Could there be some very valid use cases for noncopyable types in the realm of replacing some uses of classes, even if performance is of no concern in the domain?

It seems to me that the rules that are statically enforced on noncopyable types could be leveraged (in some cases) to guarantee memory-safety without needing to subject one’s logic to the unpredictability of concurrency that is being discussed here.