On Monday, 19 March 2018 at 11:20:05 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer
wrote:
Let me adjust your example a bit, and see if you still agree:
auto bytes = cast(ubyte[])[55_444, 289, 1_000_000, 846,
123_456_789];
writeln(bytes); // [148, 33, 64, 78, 21]
I have used cast(ubyte[]) to get ubytes as well, but I normally
would do this for values that actually *could be* ubytes. for
values higher than ubytes, I would not have expected implicit
truncation. It's especially confusing to someone who has seen
when you cast an int[] to a ubyte[], and gets the bytes for
that same data. When I use cast(ubyte[]), I took it to mean
"pretend this is a ubyte[] literal", not "cast each element to
ubyte".
I can also see this biting someone who has a long set of
ubytes, and accidentally does one that is larger than 255.
-Steve
Raw `cast` is just nasty. It's overloaded and confusing. Wrapper
template functions like `reinterpretBitsAs` can help alleviate
the pain, e.g. `assert([1, 2,
3].reinterpretBitsAs!(ubyte[]).length == 12);`.
I feel like C++ got it right (or just less wrong) with casts.
