On Tuesday, 21 June 2016 at 02:24:03 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
So the line from the spec is
"Const types are like immutable types, except that const forms
a read-only view of data. Other aliases to that same data may
change it at any time."
I tried making an alias of a const variable and modifying it,
but that didn't work. So presumably they mean something else.
yep, the spec was talking about data aliases in compiler
terminology, not about D aliases. i.e. this is valid:
int a;
...
const(int)* pa = &a;
but this is not:
int a;
...
immutable(int)* pa = &a;
here, in former case we see `pa` as "alias to data".
so, what that quote essentially means is: "`const` pointers can
point to mutable data, but `immutable` pointers cannot".
also, remember that slices are just "pointer, length" pairs, so
when we are talking about "pointers" here, the same applies to
slices too.
