(Repost)
hex strings are useful, but I think they were invented in D1 when
strings were convertible to char[]. But today they are an array
of immutable UFT-8, so I think this default type is not so useful:
void main() {
string data1 = x"A1 B2 C3 D4"; // OK
immutable(ubyte)[] data2 = x"A1 B2 C3 D4"; // error
}
test.d(3): Error: cannot implicitly convert expression
("\xa1\xb2\xc3\xd4") of type string to ubyte[]
Generally I want to use hex strings to put binary data in a
program, so usually it's a ubyte[] or uint[].
So I have to use something like:
auto data3 = cast(ubyte[])(x"A1 B2 C3 D4".dup);
So maybe the following literals are more useful in D2:
ubyte[] data4 = x[A1 B2 C3 D4];
uint[] data5 = x[A1 B2 C3 D4];
ulong[] data6 = x[A1 B2 C3 D4 A1 B2 C3 D4];
Bye,
bearophile
