Should weak be a type?

[Nickolas_Pohilets (Nickolas Pokhylets)]

@michelf

I don't think having a stable hash makes that much sense for a weak reference . It'd make sense for a weak pointer . A pointer's equality is defined by the address it contains, whereas object reference equality is defined by the referenced object's content. (And what applies to equality also applies to the hash.)

I’ve always thought of reference being a synonym for the pointer (with the exception of the C++, which has both, and distinguishes between them). And I would expect equality of references to be defined in terms of object identity - two references being equal if they refer to the same object.

I really dislike separation between == and ===. I don’t think any class should implement the == operator. And those who do now should be made structs with some heap-allocated storage encapsulated inside. I’ve already ranted about this here - Equality of functions - #32 by Nickolas_Pohilets

Anyway, regardless of terminology, for my use case I really need a type that represents a non-nil reference-counted pointer to a side table. And I need that type to not be nillified on copy. @John_McCall, do you remember what was the reasoning for making weak references nullified on copy?