On Sunday, 9 April 2017 at 14:47:39 UTC, Jonathan Marler wrote:
My guess is that making Socket a class prevents socket handle leaks because you can clean up the handle in the destructor when the memory gets freed if no one closes it. Is this the reason it is a class and are there any other reasons?
Just to definitively answer the question: The design has been done way before even D 1.0 – actually, 0.86, I just checked the Git history – and has stayed more or less unchanged since. Several people, including me, have patched up various issues since, but the clunky design stayed unchanged. Including it in D2 proper was of course a mistake – it certainly wouldn't even come close to making it into Phobos today.
— David
