string literals

[Milke Wey]

On Sat, 2008-01-26 at 10:26 -0500, bearophile wrote:
> Robert Fraser:
> > Saaa wrote:
> > > char[] str;
> > > char[] str1 = "abc";
> > > str[0] = 'b';        // error, "abc" is read only, may crash
> > > Is this example correct?
> > Yes, because the "abc" is a string literal, that is to say it's written 
> > in the code itself. If str1 was loaded from an outside source, such as a 
> > file, user input, etc., then you could modify it without issue.
> > 
> > For string LITERALS (a string literal is one you write in the code 
> > itself, usually encased in double-quotes), modifying them without 
> > calling .dup on them is bad. For other strings, it's perfectly okay.
> 
> I am no an expert of D yet, but I think in the following D 1.x code str is a dynamic array, so it can be changed safely:
> 
> void main() {
>     char[] str = "abc";
>     str[0] = 'b';
> }
> 
> Bye,
> bearophile

On linux you would get an nice Segfault when running that code.