On Thursday, 6 March 2025 at 10:46:20 UTC, tmp wrote:
I come from a C/C++ background where the pointer aliasing rules
make an assumption that pointers to different types cannot
alias each other (with the exception of a pointer to char).
This is known as the strict aliasing rule and while it can
increase optimizations it makes it quite hard to write some low
level code such as allocators or writing efficient memory
copying functions.
Do the same rules exist in D? If they do, do workarounds exist?
No, D does not have strict aliasing rules. Pointers of different
types are allowed to refer to the same memory location. However,
there are still cases where *dereferencing* those pointers can
lead to undefined behavior.
Some relevant sections of the language spec:
* [Memory Model][1]
* [Pointers][2]
* [Type Qualifiers][3]
[1]: https://dlang.org/spec/intro.html#memory-model
[2]: https://dlang.org/spec/type.html#pointers
[3]: https://dlang.org/spec/const3.html
