On Thursday, 17 April 2014 at 21:27:44 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer
wrote:
On Thu, 17 Apr 2014 17:04:25 -0400, monarch_dodra
<monarchdo...@gmail.com> wrote:
void[] will only make sense once you've accepted that
"void.sizeof == 1".
It is already accepted that when we talk about length in a
void[], it's the number of bytes. But the data has no formal
type.
Well, I always thought that "void[] slice" meant "there are
slice.length items, starting at slice.ptr. I don't know the size
of the individual items".
For example, in C, a lot of functions take "void* first, size_t
num, size_t width".
In fact, most of druntime functions take "void[]" buffers that
work that way. There's an associated typeid, so that you can now
how large each individual items are.
But any array implicitly casts to void[]. This is why it makes
a good parameter for read or write (when reading or writing the
binary data).
I guess. I just find it kind of strange that a type "that has no
type" would have an actual sizeof. Then again, I thought void had
no sizeof in C, but I just checked, and I was wrong.
Well, I guess "void[]" is C++'s "char*" for indiscriminate
buffers. Speaking of which, does "void*" trigger strict
aliasing in D? This subject seems like a hot potato no-one
wants to touch.
No, it's equivalent to void *, not char *.
in D, ubyte[] would be the equivalent of C's char *.
-Steve
Correct.
