Creating an array of default-constructed class instances

[Maxim Fomin]

On Sunday, 10 February 2013 at 06:14:37 UTC, Simon wrote:
> Hi, I'm new to the D programming language.  Overall I'm liking
> things very much, but I'm still getting the hang of a few 
> things.
>
> Here's a basic programming pattern: I have a class called Thing,
> and while I'm coding I decide I need N Thing instances.
>
> In C++ that's a matter of
>
> std::vector<Thing> things(N);
>
> In python, I can use a list comprehension.
>
> things = [Thing() for _ in range(N)]
>
> However, the obvious D version doesn't work.
>
> auto things = new Thing[N];
>
> Because Thing.init is null, this produces an array of null
> references.  Of course, I can write a for loop to fill in the
> array after creation, but this feels very un-D-like.  Is there a
> straightforward way to create a bunch of class instances?

You can create separate function which fills array with instances 
and return it. You can make Thing a struct aliased to array of 
classes which again initializes properly in constructor an array. 
But then you should take care that struct constructor is called.