Why implicit conversion of string literal to char[] does not works?

[Michal Minich]

On Tuesday, 2 July 2013 at 13:07:40 UTC, Regan Heath wrote:
> It is done for performance reasons.  On UNIX the compiler will 
> put the literal "abc" into read only memory.  It could/should 
> do the same on windows but doesn't yet (I believe).
>
> So, the compiler is treating them as such, by giving them the 
> type immutable(char)[] (AKA string).
>
> And, the spec should, if it doesn't, define string literals to 
> be immutable.
>

Ok I understand. What I did as a first thing when I get error on 
"char[] x = "a" was "char x = cast(char[])"a", Which was 
obviously incorrect - as the "a" was/should be placed in rom. So 
if this expression is allays wrong - casting string literal to 
mutable, then compiler should emit an error on this (If one 
implementation (dmd/win) makes this valid, it still doesn't mean 
compiler should honor implementation over specification - amusing 
it is specified that strings go into rom...)"

Also, given you explanation, I see it as good to type "auto x = 
"a" as string, but give explicit notation char[] x = "a" - I 
don't see reason to not allow string literal to be typed as both 
char[] and string at the same time, and convert to char[] - and 
also place in ram, if explicitly asked.

The only reason that comes now to mi mind is when working with 
old code base - before auto and immutable(char)[] .. the code had 
to use char[] x = "a", but these must be all eliminated by now....