DMD currently provides the Array type:
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/src/root/array.d
It is primarily designed to interact with C++.
It provides the small array optimization which is good, but its
stack space is one element and cannot be changed, making it not
suitable for small string buffers.
As a matter of fact we also have OutBuffer which reimplements the
allocation strategy a second time (with no small string
optimization)
https://github.com/dlang/dmd/blob/master/src/root/outbuffer.d
It is also quite old, not tested (at least I didn't find them),
and does not follow D idioms.
Also note that because Array is "extern (C++)", it's not possible
to add SMALLARRAYCAP as a template parameter (bug in the C++ name
mangler).
Proposal:
---------
As for LLVM, create a few tested D idiomatic facilities to use in
the front end: SmallVector, SmallString to begin with.
Here is a first take at SmallVector (no doc yet)
https://gist.github.com/gchatelet/876adfb59abe1dda58ba24d63d4e418d
I'm half convinced for now so I would like some feedback before
investing more time.
