On Tuesday, 23 January 2024 at 12:34:38 UTC, Nick Treleaven wrote:
But I'm strongly in favour of catching any bugs at compile-time
(and have been since before I discovered D). I just object to
anyone trying to downgrade the importance of automated
memory-safety checking.
I'm not downgrading the importance of memory safety. All I'm
saying is that you can't sell D as a safe language if has bugs
like this.
Here's a reduced version of one of the most bizarre bugs I've
dealt with in any language. The only reason I didn't move on to
another language was because I was too busy at the time.
The code allows for initial values if the index is less than 0,
otherwise it returns the element.
```
import std;
double value(T)(T index, double * x) {
if (index - 5 < 0) {
return 0.0;
} else {
return x[index-5];
}
}
void main() {
double[] v = [1.1, 2.2, 3.3];
// Works
writeln(value(3, v.ptr));
// Lucky: program segfaults
writeln(value(v.length, v.ptr));
}
```
I noticed this behavior only because the program crashes. Once I
figured out what was going on, I realized that the thousands of
lines of code I had already written needed to be checked and
possibly rewritten. If only I had a compiler to do that for me.
