On Mon, 21 Oct 2013 12:54:56 +0100, Jonathan M Davis <[email protected]>
wrote:
On Monday, October 21, 2013 11:58:07 Regan Heath wrote:
If what you say is true then slices would and could never be null... If
that were the case I would stop complaining and simply "box" them with
Nullable when I wanted a reference type. But, D's strings/slices are
some
kind of mutant half reference half value type, and that's the underlying
problem here.
Yeah, dynamic arrays in D are just plain weird. They're halfway between
reference types and value types, and it definitely causes confusion, and
it
totally screws with null (which definitely sucks). But they mostly work
really
well the way that they are, and in general, the way that slices work
works
really well. So, I don't know if what we have is ultimately the right
design
or not. I definitely don't like how null works for arrays though.
Given how they work, we probably would have been better off if they
couldn't be
null. The ptr obviously could be null, but the array itself arguably
shouldn't
be able to be null. If we did that, then it would be clear that null
wouldn't
work with arrays, and no one would try. It would still kind of suck,
since you
wouldn't have null, but then at least it would be clear that null
wouldn't
work with arrays instead of having a situation where it kind of does and
kind
of doesn't.
Agreed. This is preferable to the current situation, even if it's not my
personal preferred solution.
R
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