Why does 'string' alias immutable(char)[] and not immutable(char[]) ?

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Wednesday 01 December 2010 03:17:48 spir wrote:
> Well, nearly everything is in the title... I would intuitively opt for the
> second type if I had to define an immutable string type.
> 
> Answers from various points of view (semantic, praticality, efficiency...)
> would be great if ever they may differ.

string str = "hello";
str ~	= " world";

That's wouldn't be possible if string were fully immutable. And since the fact 
that the elements of a string are immutable, passing a string to a function is 
guaranteed not to mess with the original, even if they append to the one passed 
in. So, making it fully immutable wouldn't really buy you anything anyway.

- Jonathan M Davis