Allow assignment by reference

[ScreamingDev]

Foo:
  someFoo:
    abc: "source and solution to all our problems"
Bar:
  someBar:
    beer: "@someFoo->abc"

The value resolver usually copy a value from one item to another when using @someFoo->abc here. But instead of a copy I may want to have a reference to the other field.

So what Alice does is:

$someBar->beer = $someFoo->abc

But how to achieve this?

$someBar->beer =& $someFoo->abc

This feels missing when generating objects.

Please note: This is not a discussion about references, how valuable they are and when to do them. I do not want to chat about the pro and cons of references neither about specific use-cases. This is a plain simple note that Alice does not seem to be able to assign by reference and I hope for some solution to that.

[theofidry]

There is indeed no support for this at the moment. If you feel it is necessary, I'll gladly accept a PR about it although I think it would be easier with #998

[ScreamingDev]

So in the end there may be

1. an adapter from YAML to the new Alice API structure as described in Change Alice API #998
2. An additional syntax for creating references like

Foo:
  someFoo:
    abc: "source and solution to all our problems"
Bar:
  someBar:
    beer: "@&someFoo->abc"
    # note the ampersand above

or something else.

So I like to change this issue to:

Please allow references in the new Alice API