Making array elements truly const/immutable

Joseph Rushton Wakeling joseph.wakeling at webdrake.net
Thu Aug 2 04:34:15 PDT 2012


On 02/08/12 10:22, Era Scarecrow wrote:
>   If someone wants to modify something, they can go into assembly language and
> force it or use C wrappers that lie wouldn't stop it. Comes down to the
> programmers in the end.

That's a very good point.  I'm not asking for something rock-solid, but just 
whether there's something I can declare that the compiler will pick up on in the 
usual case.

Though actually, I'm warming to the possibility to un-const an array via a cast; 
it would be something to use very cautiously, but potentially useful in places.

>   It almost sounds like you'd want const access with COW-like properties
> (copy-on-write), so if you try to make changes it duplicates it and uses the
> duplicate afterwards. I began a test for COW arrays before, but haven't finished
> it.

Pretty much; but I think Ali's notes on std.conv.to have probably provided me 
with the real toolset I need.

Thanks very much for the advice!



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