On Tuesday, 16 September 2014 at 08:49:04 UTC, Marc Schütz wrote:
On Tuesday, 16 September 2014 at 08:39:43 UTC, Marc Schütz
wrote:
Whether the compiler should accept that or not is a different
question. I guess it should, because if it doesn't, there
wouldn't be an easy way to achieve a reinterpret cast (only via
an intermediate cast to `void*`, which is clumsy).
Anyway, using `std.conv.to` is the way to go here (if you don't
require that last bit of performance), because it is safer in
general (also checks for overflows and the like, for example).
Thanks, didn't think of trying std.conv.to. Can someone expand a
bit on what to! is doing in this situation that cast isn't? I
looked up 'reinterpret cast' but didn't see the connection to
this.
AFAIK casting between interfaces and classes needs to adjust
the underlying pointer. Therefore, when casting an array, the
compiler would have to do that with the entire array, which
cannot be copied without allocating memory (and mustn't be
modified in-place for consistency reasons). This means that the
cast is instead a pure reinterpret cast (repainting).
Is to! creating a new array of pointers while cast isn't? This
isn't a performance critical section and it's not a huge array,
so I ask mostly out of curiosity.
