Const foreach

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday 21 November 2010 17:21:14 bearophile wrote:
> If in a D2 program I have an array of mutable items I may want to iterate
> on them but not modify them, so I'd like the iteration variable to be
> const. This is possible, but it seems I lose type inference:
> 
> 
> void main() {
>     int[3] array; // not const
>     // foreach (const x; array) {}                // Error
>     // foreach (const auto x; array) {}           // Error
>     // foreach (const(int) x; array) {}           // OK
>     foreach (const(typeof(array[0])) x; array) {} // OK
> }
> 
> 
> Is something wrong in that code? Is this a known limitation, an inevitable
> one? Is this an enhancement request worth adding to Bugzilla?

Actually, const is pointless in your example, since you're dealing with a value 
type. Where it would matter is if you were dealing with an element type which 
was a reference type or if you marked x as a ref. And unfortunately, I don't 
think that it works to use const ref in a foreach (I've never gotten it work 
anyway) - probably for the same reason that const ref won't take an lvalue (and 
I _really_ wish that it would). _That_ would likely be worth opening up an 
enhancement request for, and it's probably necessary to get foreach to work 
properly with const.

- Jonathan M Davis