This comment was originally written by @mhausner

The EvealConstGetter() method on AstNode returns a pointer on purpose. Actually, for two reasons:

1. The return value NULL means that the expression is not a compile time constant.
2. Each node in the expression tree would have to allocate a new handle for its operand(s), only to look at the type of the operand(s), and then return a raw value for which the parent of the node will have to allocate another handle.

I didn't want to "waste" handles, thus the scheme of returning pointers. The handles are not used for anything else once the evaluation of the expression is complete.

Another scheme might be that the caller provides the handle, but nodes with 2 operands would still have to allocate an additional handle.

Added this to the Later milestone.
Removed Type-Defect, Priority-Medium labels.
Added Type-CodeHealth, Priority-Low labels.

Removed this from the Later milestone.
Added Oldschool-Milestone-Later label.

Removed Oldschool-Milestone-Later label.

I think we can close this now. The sky hasn't fallen in the past 3.5 years :-)