Why explicit cast?

[Andreas Kochenburger]

Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
> "Andreas Kochenburger" <akk at nospam.org> wrote in message 
> news:eqo451$8p9$1 at digitalmars.com...
> 
>> The C-syntax is as clear as tap water, so why had this complication been 
>> added?
> 
> After having used D for more than two years, I'll have to disagree with this 
> comment ;)  Besides, as Joel said, your code really shouldn't have a lot of 
> casts in it, unless you're programming "in C" in D. 

First thanks to all those who have answered.

Indeed I am programming "in C" in D i.e. I am converting a small 
compiler from C to D, to test if D would make life easier for me.
The program uses a lot of pointers of different types to address bits 
and bytes and ints and floats etc. in a memory region directly. Probably 
this kind of system programming is not an ideal application for D.

I got also a bit frustrated about the (at least for me, messy) "very" 
flexible string handling in D: static arrays, dynamic arrays, strings, 
C-like strings (to be converted with toStringz), then I have to import 
std.c.string and std.string and then I have to add .ptr to a pointer to 
a static array string, when I use the C-function strtok from 
std.c.string it claims char* pointers and does not want char[] because 
it is a static array and its name is not the pointer to its first 
element etc etc ..... grrrrrgh