Dereference into an indexer

[Ai-N3rd]

Problem:

Currently, when accessing an indexer on a pointer in C#, developers have to use explicit dereferencing syntax, which can be cumbersome and less intuitive. For instance:

List<int> list = [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ];
List<int> *listPtr = &list;
int item = (*listPtr)[1];

Proposal:

To improve readability and reduce cognitive load for developers working with pointers and indexers, I propose introducing a new syntactic sugar for pointer dereferencing with indexers.

New Syntax:

Copy code
List<int> list = [ 1, 2, 3, 4 ];
List<int> *listPtr = &list;
int item = listPtr->[1];

[huoyaoyuan]

Pointer is much less used in C# comparing to C++. Pointer to List<T> or other reference types needs to be used with extra caution, or it would introduce GC hole.

And your syntax &[ 1, 2, 3 ] doesn't work - you can't get address of a literal expression. The compiler is free to store the instance at anywhere.