REF

Heap-allocated reference type. Similar to POINTER TO but with managed semantics. Requires --m2plus.

Syntax

TYPE T = REF MyRecord;

REF T creates a reference to a heap-allocated value of type T.
Values are created with NEW(r) which allocates via M2_ref_alloc. This prepends a hidden M2_RefHeader containing a type descriptor pointer before the payload, then returns a pointer to the payload.
Dereference with r^ to access the underlying value.
Each REF type gets a unique M2_TypeDesc with a type ID, name, parent pointer, and depth. This enables TYPECASE dispatch via M2_ISA (parent-chain walk with depth early-out).
Optional Boehm GC support: compile with -DM2_USE_GC to use garbage collection instead of manual deallocation. Falls back to malloc/free automatically if gc/gc.h is not installed.
REF is distinct from POINTER TO -- REF values carry a type descriptor header and are compatible with REFANY; plain pointers are not.

TYPE
  IntRef = REF RECORD value: INTEGER END;
VAR
  r: IntRef;
BEGIN
  NEW(r);
  r^.value := 42;
  WriteInt(r^.value, 0); WriteLn;
END RefDemo.