Assigning global and static associative arrays

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Saturday, September 01, 2012 00:12:06 ixid wrote:
> Hmm, you mean if you call the same function it creates a new copy
> every time? I misunderstood you to mean it creates it once at
> each site in the code it's called.

enum values are basically copy-pasted everywhere that they're used. So, if you 
have something like

enum arr = [1, 2, 3, 4 5];

auto a = arr;
auto b = arr;
auto c = arr;

it's effectively identical to

auto a = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
auto b = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
auto c = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

as opposed to actual variable such as

auto arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

auto a = arr;
auto b = arr;
auto c = arr;

In this case, each variable is actually a slice of the same array rather than 
duplicating the value.

Using an enum is particularly bad for an AA, since it's not exactly a simple 
data type, and there's definitely some cost to constructing them.

- Jonathan M Davis