Global variables read at compile time?

[d_follower]

On Wednesday, 15 August 2012 at 13:36:26 UTC, Stefan wrote:
> Hi there, I'm having trouble getting the following code to 
> compile:
>
> import std.stdio;
>
> string a = "a";
> string b = a;        // line 4
>
> void main()
> {
>     writeln(b);       // line 8
> }
>
> DMD spits out the error "test.d(4): Error: variable a cannot be 
> read at compile time". Is there any way to tell the compiler I 
> want b evaluated at runtime, or am I missing something obvious 
> here?

You must understand that your problem lies in line 4, not in line 
8, i.e. the following doesn't work either:

string a = "a";
string b = a;

I don't really know why, but it seems that you can only 
initialize globals with constants.

What you could do is something like this (I guess):

enum value = "a";
string a = value;
string b = value;

void main()
{
     writeln(b);
     b = "b";
     writeln(b);
}